by Suki Fleet
“Fuck you,” he said.
Someone groaned. Someone close. Nicky froze. Keeping his gun in position, Nicky turned. No one else was in the hallway. No one but them. He glanced down just as Cai lifted his blood-streaked face, his eyes meeting Nicky’s.
Not dead not dead not dead.
Nicky’s legs turned to rubber. His whole body felt weak. He had never wanted to hold and be held by someone as much as he did in that moment.
But he couldn’t let himself. He couldn’t. He needed to keep it together. He needed his anger. Grey Hair had shot Cai. And even if he wasn’t dead, he was bleeding. Nicky wasn’t sure Cai realised there was blood dripping down his face—he still appeared to be more than a little stunned and not quite aware of his surroundings.
Nicky needed to protect him, even though Nicky had never protected anyone in his life before. Not even himself. He glanced back at the stairs to see Grey Hair leaning across the stairs and whispering something to Fox Mask. Fox Mask responded with a look of pure disgust and turned away. Nicky swung the gun, gesturing that they move apart. He didn’t want them talking. Grey Hair’s glare challenged him, but Nicky thought of Cai bleeding on the floor, and he didn’t look away. After a few seconds she stepped to the side. Her long dressing gown whispered against the wood.
Sudden, hysterical laughter bubbled inside him. He was made up of equal parts terror and relief. He didn’t know what to feel. What response the world deserved right then.
“Cai?” he hissed. “Cai!” Cai groaned again in response. “Tell me where you’re hurt?”
“Just my head, I think,” Cai slurred. He shifted. Pushed himself upright with trembling arms. Blood dripped and pooled. The marble floor was shattered in a web around where Cai’s head had been. The dark spot at its centre could have been a bullet. Now that Cai had lifted his head, it was obvious the bullet had grazed him, leaving a bloody gash across his temple. The force of it had been enough to knock him out.
Nicky directed his words to Grey Hair. His voice was shaking. “You shot him in the head. You aimed to kill him. You will not fucking get away with this.”
Grey Hair stared. Her gaze hard, as though she thought she could intimidate him.
Standing up, Fox Mask scrubbed her face with her hands. “This is so fucked up.”
“Sit down.” Nicky wished there was more light. Wished he could see things more clearly.
Fox Mask didn’t. Instead she took a step down the stairs.
“Don’t,” Nicky said warningly.
“You don’t want to shoot me, Nicky. Just like I never wanted to shoot you.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t, though.”
“True. You’re scared, like I was. I’m on your side though. Here.” She pulled something out of her pocket and threw it down the stairs. It happened so fast Nicky didn’t even have time to even think of how he should react. He stepped back. “It’s just a pack of tissues. You need to apply pressure to his wound. It’ll stop the bleeding.” Nicky snatched the packet off the stairs and held them out to Cai. “I still regret not trying to keep him away from this place. I didn’t know how deeply you were involved, at first. I was scared you would hurt him. But then he knocked me out and, well, a lot happened that probably wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t. Hiding out in that mad cellar for one.”
“You threatened him with a fucking gun,” Nicky spat. “What did you expect him to do?”
“Sometimes force is the only way to protect people. Wouldn’t you agree?” She raised an eyebrow. Nicky glowered and adjusted the poor grip he had on the gun. His hands were sweating—the metal was becoming hard to hold. “I know what happened to you, Nicky. I know what happened to all of them.”
Grey Hair made a dismissive hissing sound. “Stories, stupid girl. Lies. All of it.”
Fox Mask laughed once, coldly. “You’re as much a victim as all of them, old woman, however much you pretend you aren’t. They’ve kept you here for so long you believe it’s what you want. But there’s videotapes. Have you any idea what’s on them? Have you ever been in that fucking room in the cellar with the bath tub and the cupboard with Lance’s collection of vials? This house is rotten to its core.”
Nicky’s heart was beating in his ears.
Whether she was speaking the truth or lies, it made no difference. To anything.
Fox Mask grasped the bannister and took another step down the stairs. “She tried to make me believe you were dangerous, Nicky. That you had all the information I needed. But you don’t, I know that now.”
“Stop.” Nicky shifted, standing between her and Cai.
“Okay.” She held up her hands and sat down. “See to your friend. You’ll have to put the gun down, though. You wouldn’t want it to go off unexpectedly. It’s not as though it’s the only one in the house. There are about twenty of them in that dusty library. Bit of a collector was Lance. Seemed he liked broken things, especially.”
“Go back up the stairs.”
“It wouldn’t make much difference, I’m a fast runner…. Look, you’re going to have to trust me. I’m relieved he’s okay. Truly. If he’d have died….” She sighed. “I don’t know. It’d be pretty dark, is all. I don’t want anyone else to die. Anyone innocent anyway.”
Nicky gritted his teeth and glared. She hadn’t moved back up the stairs like he’d asked. He wanted to kneel down next to Cai. He wanted to check Cai really was okay and breathing and not some sort of trauma-induced hallucination he was having. And he didn’t trust Fox Mask one bit. She’d drugged him and she’d threatened him with a gun pointed at his face, twice.
“Check your friend,” she said, and then she mouthed something. The light was too low to make whatever it was out, so Nicky ignored it and glanced to where Cai was leaning against the bannister. He could see Cai’s chest was moving, slow and even as he took breath after breath. Not dead, not dying.
Fox Mask spoke again, quietly. “Then take the money and leave, Nicky.”
“Like hell he will.” There was venom in Grey Hair’s tone, and when Nicky looked up, her stare was fierce and unforgiving. She pressed her lips together so hard they formed a thin sharp line, as though the shape of her mouth had been cut with a knife. Lance had pulled that same expression when he took those afternoon phone calls with Cyril, or when something else had displeased him.
Fox Mask was still talking, her voice low. “All the trails lead back here, Nicky. I’ve been searching for my brother’s killer for years. I’ve stolen photographs from witnesses. I’ve watched countless hours of CCTV footage. And I found a convicted murderer connected to a family that will do just about anything to cut itself from news stories and remain out of sight. I didn’t know who to trust, just like you don’t. But you don’t have to trust me to know you’ve got to leave this—”
Family.
“You’re Claudette,” Nicky said in shock, ignoring Fox Mask’s words, his eyes not leaving Grey Hair’s face. “Lance said you lived in London. With Cyril. He said he never saw you. He rarely even spoke about you. But you were here all this time. I saw you at the window once…. You were here in this house with me all along….”
Claudette glared. “This is my house. Mine. You will not touch my money.”
The sneer Fox Mask gave her was filled with righteous anger. “What on earth are you going to do with it, old woman? You can’t take it with you, you know. The fucking pharaohs tried that. Fifty grand is nothing to you.”
“It’s mine. My father put it here for me. I helped him. I chose the walls we were to use.”
“And I bet he told you you need to stay here to protect it? Your father was a fucking sick and twisted man. You’ve been as much a prisoner here as Nicky was. Those top-floor rooms are all you’ve ever known of the world. Money is just bits of paper to you. You’ve never spent any of it. Lance was out there using the fucking money from the walls for whatever he wanted, while you were stuck in this house. So I’ll ask you again—what are you going to do with it?”
“
What use are all the memories in your head? But still, you’d rather someone didn’t come along and remove a few of them, wouldn’t you?” Claudette snapped.
“What are you talking about? Money isn’t memories. Money is fucking money. It doesn’t make you happy, it doesn’t love you back. It’s dirty little bits of paper that are one day going to be worthless, however many of them you have stuffed in your house.”
Nicky shook his head as they argued. He didn’t give a shit what was going on here any more. He’d had enough. Placing the gun on the bottom step, pointing away from them, he sank to his knees in front of Cai. Maybe Fox Mask and Claudette were still a threat but Nicky was willing to take the chance. He never wanted to touch a gun again.
“Tell me you’re going to be okay?” he said, searching Cai’s blood-streaked face.
“I’m going to be okay,” Cai said slowly, his throat working as though he was having trouble swallowing. “Got a bit of a headache, though, you know?”
Nicky smiled helplessly. He let his head fall against Cai’s shoulder and breathed in the musky sweat of Cai’s skin mingled with his own. The inferno had burned itself out and he just wanted… he just needed… fuck, he needed….
“I would have killed for you,” he murmured. It sounded so melodramatic out loud but he needed Cai to know—he really needed Cai to know everything he couldn’t say aloud. He clenched his hands in the material of Cai’s top.
Tentatively, Cai’s hand stroked through Nicky’s tangled hair and Nicky pushed into it wanting, needing, more. Needing Cai’s hands all over him.
Cai said softly, “Mind if we get out of here now? I don’t care about the money or any of my stuff. I just want to go.”
Yes, they had to go. Nicky tried to hold onto the strength he’d felt a few moments ago—because it was strength, and it was there inside him. It had been so long since he’d felt strong.
Fox Mask and Claudette were still arguing. Barely allowing himself to breathe, Nicky helped Cai to his feet. For a moment he was torn as to whether or not to leave the gun on the stairs. But not leaving it would mean having to pick it up again; it would mean having to carry it and take it outside to Cai’s waiting van, and Cai already had one gun to get rid of in there.
It meant carrying a part of this house with him and he didn’t want it.
Fox Mask said his name. She said, “Stockholm Syndrome.” She said, “Victim.” Other things Nicky was trying his hardest not to listen to.
Claudette kept arguing. “He wasn’t a victim, he was a leech, living here, doing nothing.”
“You think he was a leech? That’s fucking ironic, considering what Lance did to him. And what he did to you.”
“I don’t care,” Nicky said softly to himself, and felt Cai squeeze his hand. They walked across the cracked marble tiles, through dust and debris that he wanted to scrub off his skin and erase from his mind.
Of course he cared, but the difference was he didn’t want to care any more. For the first time in years, Nicky wanted to live, not just exist, and that meant getting away from this house, all of its shadows and all of its lies. Beside him Cai swayed, then righted himself. If Cai fell, Nicky wasn’t sure he was strong enough to catch him, but he would try.
They almost reached the corridor. From here Nicky could see the dining room. The big old dirty windows. Outside the last of the daylight was fading, the rain still falling grey on grey on grey, moving scribbles on a still picture. There was a whole world waiting out there beyond this fucked-up mess. A world where stars lit up the darkness. Where people did nice things for one another for no reason. Where the grey rain was exhilarating and didn’t last forever.
He could try.
But Fox Mask’s voice was so loud, her words rang through him like tiny bells, their sound like a warning. Like an alarm. “There’s a bath full of old blood down there,” she said. “The stench is unbelievable. Before I saw the medical kits and the labels on the videos, the cabinets of vials, I thought I was going to find a body. I wanted to find a body, you know, I wanted to find my brother, so I could be sure. But do you know whose blood I think it was? Can you fucking guess how sick Lance, your brother, was? What he was collecting? I suspect you can.” The words winded Nicky like a low punch but still he took another step, his fingers tightening around Cai’s. “You think I don’t know why he had so much of that sedative I found upstairs. Only fucking hospitals and drug dealers have it in those quantities. It’s an opiate.”
“I don’t care,” Nicky said, louder this time. Loud enough that his voice echoed off the marble over and over. But they weren’t talking to him and Fox Mask carried on as though he wasn’t even there.
“Your brother fed it to Nicky, kept him drugged up and forgetful, so he wouldn’t wake or remember his fucking blood being drained. Can you imagine keeping someone so weak and addicted, so utterly dependant, like a fucking pet? I bet Nicky could barely stumble from one room to another room. Your brother was killing him half a pint of blood at a time. Ring any fucking bells? Because he did it to you too, Claudette. You’ll both have been going through a pretty intense withdrawal these past few weeks.”
“Stop it!” Letting go of Cai’s hands, Nicky put his hands over his ears. “Stop it stop it stop it.” But even though he pressed his hands so tightly, the words found a way through. He tried to keep walking, but all the strength had gone from his muscles and he felt so weak.
“I wanted answers but I got here weeks too late, since Lance is dead. But believe me if anyone else is connected they’re going to pay for what he did.”
Beside Nicky, Cai had stilled. “Nicky saw Lance on CCTV. He’s not dead.”
As soon as Cai spoke, all Nicky wanted to was to reach up and cover Cai’s mouth, to push the words back in. This needed to be over. It had to be over. He couldn’t deal with it. He couldn’t deal with the truth.
Couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t….
Claudette’s scream went through him like ice injected into his bloodstream and she launched herself down the stairs. “Lies. Lies. Lies.”
Fox Mask leapt after her, pinning her to the floor at the bottom of the stairs.
She held Claudette’s hands by her sides as she spoke. “You’re scared of him. I know that. I want justice. I want to know who else was involved because it wasn’t just him. Tell me and I’ll fucking kill the bastards.”
It was too much.
The world tilted. Cai made a grab for his arm, but it was too late. The floor came up to meet Nicky in a rush. It didn’t even hurt. Nicky curled in on himself, his arms around his head. Cai’s hand was on his shoulder. Cai’s arm around his back. His body curled over him protectively. His steady heartbeat thumping close.
Lance had been killing him, and deep, deep down—in some place far darker than any other—Nicky was scared he’d known it all along. That he’d let it happen.
Rough fingers dug into his ribs as Cai dragged him upright and they stumbled from the entrance hall and into the corridor.
Cai whispered all the while, “It’s okay, we’re getting out of here. She’s making sure we get out of here.”
But all Nicky could think was, he should have died a long time ago. And if Lance wasn’t dead, he was going to come for him. He was going to come for all of them.
Masks, Cai
Pain thundered inside Cai’s head every time he moved. How they made it to the van, he didn’t know. He stopped as soon as they reached it. His head hurt less when he stopped moving. The bonnet was wet and cold against his fingertips. He breathed in the dirty scent of the rain and tried not to think about everything that had happened.
Nicky circled the van. Round and round and round he went. Every so often he would look up at the sky and laugh. It wasn’t a good laugh. It scared the hell out of Cai. Over the past weeks he’d seen Nicky smile far too little, and heard him laugh even less. He’d seen him scared, panicked, upset and angry, but he’d never seen him like this.
“Nicky,” Cai said softly. Nicky didn’t e
ven look at him. “Nicky, we need to go, but I don’t think I should drive.”
The gravel crunched as Nicky walked around and around.
“Nicky.”
The next time Nicky circled near him, Cai reached out and caught the sleeve of his rain-soaked top. Nicky stopped. His narrow chest heaved as though he was breathing too fast again.
Panicking.
Panicking so badly.
Gently, Cai pulled him closer, until their bodies were only inches apart. All he wanted was to wrap his arms around Nicky, but he waited. With Nicky, waiting was part of the deal, and he would wait for as long as it took.
Exactly how it had happened, Cai didn’t have a clue, but he knew he understood far more about Nicky than he ever thought he’d understand about anyone.
Barely seeming to move, Nicky grew closer and closer, until Cai could feel the awful tremors shuddering through his body, and when he fisted both hands in Cai’s shirt and pressed his forehead against Cai’s chest, Cai knew he would die to keep him safe.
The rain fell. Every so often a raised voice could be heard from the house. Fox Mask and Claudette were hammering it out. They needed to go. Thinking about what had happened to Nicky hurt worse than his head wound.
They got in the van. Nicky sat in the driver’s seat looking more terrified than Cai had ever seen him.
“You can do this,” Cai said, his voice firm. He knew he didn’t need to explain that he meant the leaving and not the driving. The driving was nothing.
Minutes passed. The sound of rain hammering on the roof filled the van. It was getting dark now. They were both so cold.
“We need to take you to a hospital,” Nicky said suddenly, turning to look at him and blinking quickly. He twisted the keys in the ignition. “You need stitches and they need to check you for concussion.”
