Scarred

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  Without a parking spot in sight, I had to leave the TT half a block north of the studio. I was too busy playing with my phone to notice the small group of men who were lurking in the shadows of the adjacent alleyway.

  “Hey, rubia,” the one called. His voice gave me instant chills. I knew that voice.

  I looked up to see the same group of guys who'd tried to attack me once before by the studio walking into the light of the street. The ones Cooper threatened to come back and eliminate. Instinctively, I went for the ring on my finger, knowing that I had to do something. I stood no chance against them by myself.

  “She prefers 'Blue Eyes',” Matty growled from behind me. I hadn't even heard him coming.

  “You again?” the leader said, stepping out and distinguishing himself from the rest of his group. “I don't see your blond friend around to save you this time. You really want to go there, or do you want to give me what I want and live?” He raked his eyes over me heavily and my body shook in response. Me going with him was totally not an option.

  “Oh, I want to go there,” Matty said, voice terribly low and threatening. “Stay here,” he said to me, putting his body between me and them. “In the alley,” he called to the big guy. “It's less visible.”

  “I couldn't agree more,” he agreed, flashing the knife he’d just pulled from the back of his pants.

  The men moved like a wave, crashing into the alley with one big lurch. The fighting began instantaneously. As best as I could tell, there were about eight of them, four of whom were already sprawled out along the damp and dirty ground. Matty seemed to be saving the best for last.

  “Matty, no!” I yelled, running after him. He had to be stopped. I wasn't sure that he'd killed anyone yet, but at the rate he was going, it wasn't going to take long to accomplish that.

  “Get back,” he snarled, turning his flaming orange eyes on me. Scarlet slammed into my forehead, causing pain like I hadn't felt since the last vision I'd gotten from the Rev. It wasn't a welcome return.

  Take it off!

  I looked down to see my hand jerking towards my ring.

  “No!” I yelled.

  Take it off, NOW!

  My fingers wrapped around the gleaming silver and started to pull.

  “No, no, no...,” I told myself, trying desperately to keep it on. “You can't come out.”

  You can't keep me in here. He needs me!

  Sweat rolled down my face, cooled by the crisp night air as I fought with myself for control. I glanced up at the alley to see Matty pinning the last man standing against the red brick of the building. Even in the darkness, I knew that thug feared for his life. I didn't need to see him; his desperation wove through the air like a call for help.

  “Matty,” I said, struggling to force the words out. “You have to stop. Please.”

  “He wanted to hurt you,” he said, his eyes glowing in the darkness of the alley.

  “Let him go. Just let him go.”

  “I can't,” he said, turning his attention back to his soon-to-be victim.

  “Stop!” I yelled in desperation.

  LET ME OUT!

  My control wavered―I couldn't fight her any longer. She was too much. I tore the ring off my own finger, launching it into the air.

  I was met with instant darkness.

  * * *

  I don't know how long I was gone that time, but when I came to I was in my bed at home, naked.

  And I was not alone.

  25

  Matty smiled at me as he roused. My screaming and crashing onto the floor seemed to have woken him.

  “Morning, Blue Eyes,” he said, with a low and sexy morning voice. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “I live here. What are you doing here?” I asked, scurrying backwards on the rug, taking the comforter with me. “How did we get home last night?”

  He eyed me strangely for a moment.

  “You really don't know, do you?”

  “No, Matty, I have no clue!” I said, sounding every bit as panicked as I felt.

  “I drove your car here,” he said, still looking puzzled. “My parents got home last night. We couldn't go there.”

  “So she told you to come here?” I asked, dumbfounded. “Was Cooper here? Oh my God...you didn't hurt him, did you?”

  I tore out of the room, tripping on the blanket wrapped around me. I flung Cooper's door open to see the bed still made, unslept in.

  “He wasn't here,” Matty growled.

  “Stop that,” I said, sticking my finger in his face. “You stop that shit right now. If you so much as breathe wrong on Cooper, I will fuck you up myself, do you understand me?”

  “Are you threatening me?” he asked, face intrigued.

  “Yes. I am. Do you want to see if I'm good for it?” I said, puffing myself up as much as my false bravado would allow me.

  “You're hot when you're mad,” he said, moving in for a kiss. “You know that?”

  He locked his lips on mine and I felt Scarlet flare, but not take over. When I managed to pull myself free, I looked down at my hand to see that my ring had been replaced.

  “You dropped it,” he said, twirling it around on my finger. “You used to always have it on. I thought it was important to you, so I grabbed it. I put it on you while you were sleeping last night.”

  “Thanks,” I whispered, hating him for being thoughtful—for being the Matty I recognized. But I was happy to have woken up as me because of what he had unknowingly done. He'd caged the beast.

  If only I'd known how to cage his.

  The turning of the door knob snapped my attention back to reality. Cooper entered the living room, and, with one look down the hall at Matty and me, his eyes glowed yellow.

  “Ruby,” he said, voice lower than I was hoping to hear it.

  “Cooper, I can explain.”

  “You don't need to explain anything,” Matty said, pushing me behind him.

  “Oh, I think she does,” he said, holding up a copy of the Boston Globe. “Eight bodies were found near your dance studio last night, Ruby. Any thoughts as to how that happened?”

  “You need to mind your own fucking business,” Matty snapped.

  “And you need to mind yours,” Cooper said, moving towards the hallway. It was such a confined space and their bodies cramped it more than they should have. “You also need to recognize that she is my business.”

  “She is my business,” Matty grumbled, advancing towards Cooper

  “For now.” Cooper came within inches of Matty, and I fought hard to get between them.

  “Enough,” I said, trying to force them apart. “This is neither the time nor place, you two. If you want to have a pissing contest, that's fine with me, but you can do it on your own time and your own turf. This is my house! Matty, you need to take my car and go home. Now. I'll talk to you later.”

  “I'm not leaving,” he said, eyes glued to Cooper.

  “I say you are,” I hissed, before softening my tone.

  I realized that forcing him to do anything wasn't going to work. He needed reassurance, like any strong but insecure male did. I tried a different approach.

  “Matty,” I said, locking my hand in his hair. “Cooper and I have business to discuss. Now I need you to go home and make sure everything is copacetic there. Take my car. I'll call you later to make plans.”

  I planted a long, hard kiss on him for emphasis then broke free of him, feeling flushed and flustered. Not all of that was an act.He beamed at the display, knowing that he'd just put Cooper on notice: I was his. Escorting him to the door, I dropped another kiss on him before he left. Once he was clear of the landing, I shut the door quietly and listened for his disappearing footsteps.

  “Don't start,” I told Cooper, putting my hands up defensively. “Can we just skip to the part about how to cover this thing up?”

  “I called Sean,” he said soberly. “I didn't get an answer.”

  “Try Jay. Somebody needs to get on this ASAP.”

&
nbsp; “I’m on it,” he said, pulling out his phone. “Go get cleaned up. You reek of sex and your new boyfriend. It's making me nauseous.”

  I couldn't even make a retort. It was making me nauseous too.

  * * *

  “Jay is handling it,” Cooper said as I emerged from the bathroom fully dressed and a towel wrapped around my hair. “So what exactly do you know about what happened last night?”

  “He did it. I saw it all happen,” I said, plopping down on the armchair. “It was the same group of guys that tried to attack me last time. In fairness, he was trying to defend me. At least it started that way.”

  “And how did it end?”

  “With a body count, apparently,” I muttered, burying my head in my hands.

  “Ruby…,” he probed. “This isn’t the time for a meltdown.”

  “I don't know how it ended,” I said, fiddling with my ring. “I took this off, and I don’t remember a damn thing after that.”

  “You took it off!” he yelled, lunging towards me. “Why would you do—”

  “She made me!” I screamed, jumping to my feet to meet his advance. “I swear to you on all that is holy that she literally hijacked my nervous system and forced me to do it. I watched my hand as I did it, like it wasn’t really mine. I fought her the whole time, but I just couldn't stop her, Cooper.”

  His eyes widened beyond what I thought was physically possible.

  “You can't control her,” he whispered, turning pale.

  “I'm sorry, Coop; I tried. I tried so hard. Something happens to her when he's like that. It supercharges her or something.”

  “That's the mate bond,” he said flatly. “Its power is tremendous.”

  “So now I'm fucked for a whole new reason? Guess you can't throw yourself under the bus for that one, can you?”

  Anger swept in to keep my fragile mind from breaking. It was still my best defense mechanism—it never failed me. I smashed a lamp against the wall that still contained the hole from Cooper's previous rampage.

  “Ruby,” he started, his phone interrupting him. “It's Sean,” he said, looking nervous. “I don't know what to tell him.”

  “Just tell him the truth,” I sighed. “There's no good way to spin this one.”

  He lifted the receiver to his face, about to speak, when I realized something. The truth needed to come from me.

  “Give it to me, Cooper,” I said, reaching my hand towards him. He saw that I was resigned to doing it and didn't put up a fight. “Thank you,” I told him, before heading to my room.

  “Sean?”

  “What's happened now?” he asked. I could tell by his tone that he was rubbing his forehead.

  “You haven't spoken to Jay?”

  “No,” he said, voice dropping. “Why?”

  “There's a problem. In Boston. It involves a lot of bodies.”

  “And who dropped the bodies?”

  “Matty,” I whispered, before quickly adding that he'd done it in defense of me.He was silent for a moment and I nearly chewed off my fingertip awaiting his response. “Sean? You still there?”

  “McGurney's dead,” he said, out of nowhere.

  “What?” I shouted.

  “I said McGurney's dead!” he snarled.

  And the hits just kept on coming.

  26

  “How?” I gasped, forgetting my own problems for a second.

  “Executed at his home,” he said, carefully, “which is not an easy thing to do to an ex-military man.”

  “Who do you think—”

  “I don't have time for this. I need to talk to Jay. Now,” he said, getting more angry with every word. “I'll deal with you when I get back.”

  Then he hung up.

  “Shit,” I said quietly.

  “What's happening now?” Cooper called from down the hall. There was no such thing as a private conversation with him around.

  “Our contact at the CIA was murdered,” I said, opening my bedroom door. “Executed was the word Sean used.”

  “Well, he would know,” Cooper said bitterly. “So where does that leave things there?”

  “I have no clue. He hung up on me without saying anything helpful other than he needed to talk to Jay.”

  “So we wait?”

  “I guess, unless you know how to Obi-Wan the Boston PD into thinking there were no dead bodies in that alley.”

  “If only,” he scoffed. “I'd have busted that out on more than one occasion before now.”

  A knock on the door startled us both.

  “Who is it?” I called out, looking at Cooper as his body coiled in response.

  “It's Jay, Ruby,” he said, lacking his usual joviality. “You need to let me in.”

  I walked over and popped the door enough to see him standing tall, looking one hundred percent business.

  “You have to come with me,” he said, expressionless.

  “Why?”

  “I have orders, Ruby. Don't make this any more difficult than it needs to be.”

  Cooper came up behind me, opening the door to full capacity.

  “She's not going anywhere.”

  “He said you'd say that,” Jay sighed. “He also said that if you want to stay above terra firma that you'll butt out of it. His words were that he had grounds enough to take you down if you force his hand. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's not my job to question him.”

  “Cooper,” I said, turning to him, “it'll be okay. Just stay here. Please.”

  “I'm not letting you leave,” he said, grabbing my arm.

  “And I'm not letting you pay for my mistakes. He won't hurt me. I know he won't.”

  “You don’t believe that,” he growled. “I know you don’t.”

  “I have to, Cooper,” I whispered. “Please don’t make this any harder for me.”

  The tears welled in my eyes as I leaned in to give him a kiss on the cheek. I couldn't force the word “goodbye” out of my mouth, so I turned and ran out the door before the moment got any heavier. Goodbye had a finality to it that I wasn't willing to acknowledge.

  The truth was that Cooper was right―I wasn’t certain that Sean wouldn’t hurt me. His recent unwillingness to let harm fall upon me was likely nullified by my treachery, and in that moment, I wished for a do-over. I would have given anything to have just come clean in the first place, when there hadn’t been a body count associated with my actions.

  Jay moved me quickly through the stairwell and down to the street. I hadn't noticed the gun in his hand until he moved to conceal it as we walked out onto the sidewalk.

  “Where are we going?” I asked him nervously.

  “Sean's building. Second floor.”

  “Second floor?”

  “You'll see when you get there,” he said with a tight expression. “You really fucked up this time, didn't you?”

  His words made my heart sink into my shoes. He sounded disappointed in me, like I'd forced Sean's hand and neither of them was happy with the outcome. If they weren't happy with it, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be happy either.

  We pulled up in front of Sean's building and it all started to feel surreal. This had become a place of such deep and passionate emotion for me that to think of it being associated with anything else made my chest tighten. Jay walked me inside and took me to the second floor. The entrance looked benign enough, like it could just be another apartment, but I doubted I was going to be that lucky. Turns out I wasn't. Inside was a veritable Home Depot of weapons. Aisles upon aisles of shelves were chock-full of weapons, explosives, and anything else you could think of to cause bodily harm to another being, human or otherwise.

  It was like stepping into Ronnie's wet dream.

  I gulped hard as I took in my surroundings. I was temporarily relieved to see that there weren't any holding cells, until I saw a single chair on the far side of the room, complete with restraints.

  “I need you to go sit down, Ruby,” Jay said, finally letting some emotion slip
through. He wasn't happy about the task he'd been assigned.

  Nodding once, I made my way to the only chair in the place. The walls around it had some strange patinaed effect from afar, but, upon closer inspection, I could plainly see that they were stained with blood. Lots of blood.

  “I'm not going to restrain you,” he said, unable to look at me. “I'll be over by the door.”

  “How long do I have to stay here?”

  “It won't be long now. Sean will be back soon,” he said, walking away. “He was already on his way when you called him. He was worried about you. Guess he had a right to be.”

  “I'm sorry, Jay. I never meant for this to happen.”

  “Stay put,” he said, opening the door. “I think I'd rather wait outside.”

  * * *

  It seemed like eons before I heard the distinct sound of footsteps coming up the hallway stairs. My heart raced with every echoing one. I watched from afar as the door handle turned and an arm pressed into the room, then the body it belonged to.

  “I see Jay didn't quite follow my instructions,” Sean said, facing me.

  “Sean, I—”

  “Please explain something to me, Ruby,” he said, his jet black eyes piercing mine as he stalked towards me. “How is it that you stood by and watched Matty kill eight people?”

  “I...I didn't mean to, but—”

  “Did Scarlet find it amusing? Or was she just too lazy to stop him?”

  “I couldn't let her out! You...you said—”

  “Couldn't or wouldn't?”

  “Couldn't!” I yelled. “Do you think I wanted to see that? To see those people murdered?”

  “You have to help me out here, Ruby, because the pieces of this puzzle just aren't adding up for me right now, and I've got a lot of heat coming down on me.” He moved closer until his face was right in mine. “I told you,” he whispered. “I told you that if there was a problem you needed to come to me...that I would fix it.”

  I didn't know what to say. I crumbled under his scrutiny, letting my head fall loose on my neck.

  “I know you did, but—”

  “But you didn't!” he screamed, his voice taking over the vast room. “It can't be like this, Ruby. We can't be like this.”