Death's Mantle: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Revelations Book 1) by J.A. Cipriano

wasn’t actually the case, but for some reason, every time she tried to comfort or talk to him, a hole opened inside of him and guilt crept up the back of his neck like a red hot spider.
    When he pulled away, disappearing into the emptiness of his room so he wouldn’t have to deal with her, his father told her Ian liked to be alone, that he was happier by himself.
    Ian slammed his fist into the shower tile. Pain shot through his hand, sobering him. He felt tears well in the corners of his eyes, and he wiped them away angrily.
    “Who said I wanted to be alone!” he growled at the wall. It did not respond.
    When he was sixteen, he asked to move out, not wanting to be a nuisance to his father and stepmother, especially since she was pregnant with twins. He’d been given a two-bedroom apartment and money was regularly deposited into his bank account for living expenses. The only real contact they’d had since then were the occasions where his father asked if he was eating okay since he spent so little.
    Ian subsisted largely on soda and ramen noodles. He called it his power food, but deep down, he knew it was because he wanted to be as little of a nuisance as possible. If only his friends knew he was thin not from swimming but more from not eating.
    He shut the water off and began to dry himself with a thin white towel with a fading blue emblem of a crown in the bottom left-hand corner. He smirked. He’d tried better towels over the years, and had a closet full of more expensive ones, but for whatever reason, he always preferred the cheap one he’d nabbed from a hotel when his father had taken everyone to Europe two summers ago.
    As he hung the towel back on the rack, a hunger pang struck him, and he gripped the wall for stability. Dizziness threatened to overwhelm him, but he fought against it desperately. The room continued to sway as he pulled his sweatpants over his still semi-wet legs and cursed at the trouble the pants gave him.
    Ian stumbled into the other room and flopped down on the couch to catch his breath and wait for the world to stop spinning. Malcom didn’t move but continued thumbing through the book he was holding until he found the page he’d marked earlier. He glanced around until he found Ian and walked over to him, thrusting the book into his lap.
    “As far as I can tell, Polyphemus was the cyclops that Odysseus tricked on his quest back home,” the words seemed to tumble out of Malcom in a rush so Ian had to turn them over in his mind for a moment before they made sense. “You know, the ‘nobody’ guy?”
    “Nobody guy?” Ian asked, raising an eyebrow.
    “Yeah, when Polyphemus asked Odysseus his name, Odysseus said ‘nobody.’ So when the cyclops yelled, ‘Nobody hurt me,’ everyone basically pointed and laughed.” Malcom shrugged. “If Polyphemus has a wife, I’m not sure who it is, Galatea, maybe, but I think she’s a nymph.”
    “I’m pretty sure neither nymphs nor cyclopses are real,” Ian’s stomach grumbled so loudly he wondered if Malcom could hear it. Well, he did have food, after all… He got to his feet and went into the attached kitchen.
    “The cyclops seemed pretty real when he attacked Kim in the hallway during school,” Mal replied, gritting his teeth together. His eyes went distant like he was reliving the memory.
    “I asked Kim about it after the swim meet, and she told me you were a crazy person,” Ian said, pulling a Coke out of the fridge before shutting it and shoving some noodles into the microwave. “That there was no cyclops or anything at all. And,” he added, taking a swig of soda, “there is absolutely no damage to the school even though you claim the hallway had been partially destroyed.”
    “How can she say that? The monster practically killed her.” Mal shook his head. “Are you sure she just wasn’t being hostile.”
    “I’m pretty sure that was exactly what’s going on, unless you hallucinated the whole thing. You’re not doing