The Cost of Justice

by Nova Drake

  Her eyes settled on his knuckles, still sitting in the water. “Wwwhy?” she asked.

  “The cold is the only thing that helps until that remedy starts to work,” he explained motioning toward her oddly colored bath. He watched her face for a moment. “You keep trying to get answers from them, but they can’t understand you.”

  Too tired out to speak, her eyebrows drew together in question.

  “You call them Niyazine monsters. Typically, brain function is one of the things affected during their transformation. Almost all of them lose their higher intelligence. Memory of their prior lives is lost, everything about who they were. They become much more instinctual creatures, animal-like, only with a dangerous ability. They are more powerful than any of the enhanced that survive the Niyazine drug, but they are unpredictable, and often violent. You can’t communicate with them. They’re incapable of understanding you.”

  Creepy had a lot more information than she’d originally thought, but the hypothermia setting in made it impossible for her to respond - or ask how the hell he got water that cold.

  “Your lips are turning blue, can you stand?”

  Jess could barely move between the residual aching and the constant burning sensation in her muscles. Not to mention the shivering and numbness. She attempted to get her feet under her, but couldn't manage to stand.

  Seeing her struggle, Creepy grabbed her arms and helped her up. Her heavy, numb legs stumbled out of the tub and nearly collapsed until he caught her. The air hitting her wet clothes made everything worse. Her shivering was now full-on quaking. And without the water surrounding her, the pain was getting worse again.

  “I wwwanna go bback in,” she whimpered, trying to move away from him.

  He held her tighter. “You can’t, your body can only take so much at that temperature.”

  “It’s cccolder out here,” she complained as her teeth chattered.

  “It’s not. I’ll get you a towel. Can you stand?”

  He started to let go, but her knees instantly buckled. Catching her again, he guided her to the floor gently so he could step away. Unable to take another second with the freezing fabric against her skin, Jess peeled off her tank top and pants, and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them to her body. It was a little better. Her bra and underwear were still wet, and so cold, but there wasn’t a chance she was losing those until she had that towel. The chill seemed to go all the way down to her bones. Warming up was impossible.

  Creepy came back through the doorway with a towel. He made it one step in before he froze. Jess glanced up at him, and his typically expressionless face held emotion she hadn’t seen in him before. Surprise flashed across his features before he tossed her the towel and turned his back.

  “Sorry,” he murmured.

  Jess wrapped the towel around herself with shaking arms, but she still wasn’t strong enough to get off the floor. Ugh, now she had to actually ask for help? Could this week get any worse? Tears of frustration burned her eyes, and that only irritated her even more.

  Before she could get her voice working again, Creepy returned and scooped her up. His body was so warm against her now that she’d ditched her subzero clothing. She snuggled against him and felt him tense under her touch. She was making him uncomfortable. Jess thought about it for half a second. Nope, she didn’t care. If he didn’t want her to touch him, he shouldn’t have stuck her in a freezing bath. She ran her arm up to his neck and found that his skin was even warmer. He flinched at her touch, but she ignored it. Hooking her arm around him, she tucked her face into his neck.

  Creepy tried to set Jess down on a couch near an ancient fire-burning iron stove. She refused to let go. Screw that. She’d warm up twice as fast if he held on to her.

  “What are you doing?” he finally asked when he couldn’t pry her off his neck. He sat down with her and tried to move her next to him so he could escape, but she held on. Her arms remained draped around his neck, and her legs were over his lap. Her thigh pressed into his warm stomach.

  His neck had warmed her face enough to calm the teeth chattering to a more normal level. “You’re warm, I’m frozen solid. You stuck me in that tub. You can warm me up.” Her whole body still trembled.

  “I was helping. And if you let me go, I can get something for your hand. The pain will come back more once you’re warm again. I have something that will help.”

  Another tremor ran through Jess. This one had nothing to do with the cold. God, she couldn’t go through that pain again. Tears stung her eyes, and she took a shaky breath. Leaning away from him, she pulled her limbs in, tucking them into her body as she curled into a little quaking ball.

  Creepy left and returned a moment later. He sat next to her again and opened a glass jar with some kind of dark oil in it.

  “I need to see your hand.”

  Jess pulled her arm away from her body and held it out for him. His touch was warm and gentle, but that wasn’t enough to cancel out the jarring pain that rolled over her with every swipe of his fingers as he massaged the oil into the shadows on her wrist.

  Jess buried her face into the towel to muffle her cries as he worked. So much for never showing weakness. Creepy had seen more weakness than she ever knew she had in her. If she didn’t owe him her life, she’d have to kill him. If word of this got out, she still might.

  “It should feel a little better once that absorbs into your skin,” Creepy mumbled as he let her hand go.

  She nodded and cuddled into his side again, in part for his warmth, but also because the whole damn experience shook her to her core, and for some reason, she found a little comfort in the awkward, emotionless, rock of a man.

  Jess felt him tense up under her again. What the hell was with this guy, had he never been touched before? She probably should have asked permission, but she didn’t want to give up the comfort. He would have to be the one to move away. She wouldn’t stop him. But he didn’t try.

  For the first time, Jess felt less capable, scared, weak. She walked right up to murderers all the time with the idea that no one could ever hurt her that badly. All the injuries she’d ever gotten, she just patched up herself, given it a couple of days, and went right back to work. She was tough. She told herself that physical pain wasn’t something to be afraid of. She was wrong. She’d never been more wrong in her life, and she’d made some pretty epic mistakes. Would she ever walk up to a fight again with the confidence she had before? The memory of that agony would remain with her forever. Now she had something to fear.

  Chapter 19

  Jess burrowed into Creepy while the silent tears continued to flow. He shifted uncomfortably, and she wrapped her sore arm around his waist before he could take off again. Instead, he hesitantly placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. Several long moments later, her pain finally started to dull, and she could find a little humor in how uneasy she was making her rescuer. Her breathing and shivering slowed, and she took a deep, shaky breath, letting it out with a sigh of relief. Letting go of Creepy with one hand, she swiped her hand across her cheek. It came away black. Her make up didn’t hold up through hours of sobbing and a polar bath. She rubbed at her face a few more times, cleaning up the mess as much as she could.

  Her voice came out weak and broken, but she tried to make up for it with a little attitude. “So I take it the other women you rescue in the middle of the night don’t end up half-naked in your arms?” she teased in an attempt to further his discomfort.

  She managed a grin when his hand pulled off of her shoulder. Her amused eyes moved up to meet his, but he looked away.

  “Wow, you must be quite the ladies man.” Jess pulled back, and tucked the towel in around her. The distance between them left her cold again, but she owed him a little slack. “Um, thanks. For everything you did.”

  “I owed you.”

  “No, you didn’t. We were even. If anything, I still owed you. You got me home when I had that concussion. You helped me get home from that warehouse and burned
yourself saving me from Sunshine. Taking out Smoky was beyond anything you owed me,” she answered, gingerly taking his hand and looking at his shadowed knuckles.

  “Sunshine and Smoky?” he questioned.

  She smiled. “It’s usually hard to get a name out of people, so I generally come up with something fitting. Sunshine cause, you know, she kinda glowed. And Smoky for the weird gray swirling…”

  Jess had barely finished her thought when something occurred to her. Her eyebrows drew together, and she flipped his hand over to look at his almost perfect palm. She grabbed his shirt and tried to lift it, but he was off the couch in a heartbeat.

  “Your burns are healed already?”

  “I heal quickly,” he murmured.

  She stared and started piecing things together, starting with how much he knew about the Niyazine monsters. “Are you one of the enhanced from the Niyazine trials?”

  “No,” he answered simply.

  She tried to make sense of how he could have healed that much from the burns in three days. Was she remembering the severity of his burns correctly? She glanced down at her own burned arm, still pretty damn gross. Jess met Creepy’s eyes and held his gaze sternly. She felt the chill cut down through her chest again, but the perspective she’d recently gained made her less afraid. His creepy factor had gone down significantly.

  Tucking the towel around her, she stood on her wobbly legs and moved closer. She grabbed onto his arm with one hand, holding as firmly as she could with her weakened state. The other fisted around his shirt and pulled it up. Red skin covered the center of his nearly healed chest. Gently, not wanting to hurt him, she ran her fingers across his chest. Her touch trailed lightly across his velvety skin in amazement. His burns had been worse than hers. He had to be enhanced.

  “You’re one of the Niyazine enhanced,” she said again.

  “No.” His voice was rough and breathy, and a new kind of shiver ran through her at the sound.

  Jess’s hand moved lower, tracing the red skin leading down his torso, by the time she hit the top of his abs, his hand stopped hers, pressing it against him, but not letting her drop any lower. Her eyes shifted up to his face. His chest rose and fell with heavy breaths. His eyes were closed. He was suddenly much more hot than creepy.

  Jess dropped his shirt and reached her free hand up behind his neck, gently tugging his face down. His brow furrowed in confusion, but his eyes didn’t open, and her lips were on his before he realized what she was doing. His body tensed as her lips pressed to his. She gently ran her lips across his again, this time with the tiniest swipe of her tongue. He sucked in a sharp breath. And when she pulled back, he followed.

  Jess pulled his warm body against her as the heat of the kiss intensified. Creepy’s strong arms wrapped around her, and suddenly she was perfectly warm. Her skin flushed with the heat of their quickly intensifying desire. The chemistry between her and Creepy was something she’d never experienced before.

  A quiet moan escaped from her throat as the tension built. She dragged her teeth over his lower lip, and a soft growl rumbled his chest, sending heated excitement shooting through her. Creepy’s hands quickly moved to her shoulders and pushed her away, holding her at arm’s length while he stared at the floor, panting for air.

  Jess also tried to catch her breath - and figure out what the hell just happened. He squeezed his eyes shut, and Jess grew a little concerned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Why are you kissing me?” His voice was low and growly, and it made her insides purr with want.

  “Uh well, I kinda like you and you’re kinda hot. Is it that big of a deal?”

  “You don’t know me.”

  Since when did anyone care about that? “Uh, sorry. I guess I didn’t realize that was important to you. I might know you a little better if you weren’t so damn secretive.”

  Creepy didn’t look up. His eyes were glued on the floor and she was starting to get a little frustrated. Why was this guy so hard to read?

  “Look, why don’t you start by telling me your name?”

  He took a deep breath and released her shoulders. Stepping back, he finally let his eyes move up to meet hers, his stone-cold composure back in place. “Creepy guy is no longer sufficient?” His tone was as blank as his eyes.

  Jess’s jaw dropped. Her face flushed slightly, and then confusion set in. She looked away, running through everything that happened in the past few weeks. Sure, she’d described him as kind of hot and creepy. She’d called him creepy to his face, but she’d never called him by that nickname out loud. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Creepy guy? Where’d you hear that?”

  He stared. His face showed nothing, but he didn’t answer, and that might have been all the answer she needed.

  She nodded, her throat was dry, and the implications of her theory made her a little nervous. “You don’t just heal quickly, there’s more to your ability. You can hear thoughts? Read minds? You can’t tell me you’re not one of the enhanced. It’s pretty obvious.”

  “I’m not one of the enhanced.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t believe you.”

  His face was emotionless again, and his icy stare was getting to her, but she stood her ground. Her arms folded over her chest and she stared right back, challenging. His jaw clenched.

  “I’m not one of the enhanced from the trials. I’m one of the monsters.”

  Before she could question his response, he changed. Her heartbeat stammered erratically, pounding twice as hard to make up for it. Black took over his eyes, leaving nothing but a tiny ring of blue-grey at the edges of pupils far too large for human eyes. If she thought his stare was creepy before, she was not even close to prepared for this. It was like staring into the eyes of a great white shark moving in for the kill. Maybe even the eyes of the Devil himself. Freakier than Smokey’s by miles. The black bled into the rims of his eyes and branched out as she became trapped in his gaze. She again had that feeling of being completely exposed before the black receded to just within his eyes, leaving its terror behind.

  Fear flooded through her, and every instinct told her to run, but she was frozen. With the exception of her buckling knees, which promptly gave out and dropped her to the floor. She couldn’t look away. Shudders racked her shoulders. Goosebumps raised over every inch of her body, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. They say the eyes are windows to the soul, and that was just it - there was nothing. A chilling void stared back at her, boring straight through her and flaying her open.

  Staring into his soulless, black eyes, every gut instinct warned her there was no humanity to be found. Only the promise of nightmares and death lurked in those vacant orbs. And yet she couldn’t look away. Her eyes held his glare, challenging their magnetic draw as if tempting the fate they offered.

  Chapter 20

  Jess’s breath had escaped her, and she still hadn’t quite managed to catch it. Suddenly wheezing, she squeezed her eyes shut to regain control of her senses, breaking his spell in the process.

  Once she wasn’t staring directly into his eyes, her breaths came easier. She still felt his cold stare on her, but at least now some rational thought could enter her head.

  Okay, that was pretty fucking freaky. But scary or not, he could have let her die, and he’d helped her instead. Her eyes wandered up his body. He stood perfectly still, muscles tense, arms folded over his chest, standoffish for sure - defensive. She didn’t dare meet his eyes again, not yet. Squeezing her eyes closed again, she forced a few deep breaths.

  When her heart was no longer trying to break its way out of her chest, Jess opened her eyes. For someone that never showed fear, she’d done a bang-up job of letting Creepy see her every weakness. It was time to grow some balls and live up to her reputation, even if she had to fake it.

  Not quite ready to look up again, she stared at the heater behind him. “So does that mean you’re not willing to tell me your name?” her voice was a little shakier than she would hav
e liked.

  He was quiet for a moment, maybe a little surprised by her words. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Creepy guy is no longer sufficient,” she answered with a smile. Finally letting her eyes wander up, she found that his were a somewhat safer icy blue. “I typically like to get the name of anyone whose mouth my tongue has been in,” she added jokingly. Then she tipped her head in contemplation. “Well, that’s not true. I don’t typically bother to get a name, but you’re a special circumstance.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did you save me? Why did you help me before I’d ever done anything for you?”

  Creepy shrugged and looked away, clearly still defensive.

  “You’re not a monster,” she said.

  His harsh glare snapped back to her. Bitterness hardened his feature. The denial so evident it didn’t require words. But Justice would not be swayed. She’d met more than her share of monsters, and they’d all looked perfectly human.