by Nicole Thorn
I couldn’t say how much time went by, but I knew I had to let her go. They would start to wonder why we left, and I didn’t want this private pain shared with anyone. This belonged to her, and she let me in on it. It would stay that way.
I pressed my lips to her hair, because I made a promise to her I couldn’t break. Not this promise, and not to this girl. When her eyes opened, she would understand.
Gently and as slow as I could manage, I took her face in my hands. “You don’t have to see your worth for it to be there, luv. All of the best people think they’re rubbish.” I ended on the hint of a smile, and I left her to her cleaning.
The fury overtook the sorrow from the moment I couldn’t see Juniper anymore. She seemed to be my control, and I left her behind. I didn’t want her to see it when my armor cracked.
I sat on the couch in the living room, watching everyone else have their fun. I attempted to look human as I sat there, because I didn’t want to ruin it for them. Cerberus came by and nudged my leg, so I scooped him up and sat him on my lap. He turned over for a belly rub, and I gave in so that I would have something to keep my hands busy.
Zander watched me out of the corner of his eye, and I tried not to let him see what I felt. Stupid of me, really. I just kept petting the dog.
My person came back into the room from the kitchen, and looked in on the fun. She seemed so detached from anything that could bring her ease or joy. A self-inflicted punishment I wished she knew she didn’t deserve. Juniper stood awkwardly at the entrance of the room, like she didn’t know where she belonged. I didn’t want that feeling in her.
She saw me, and my heart jumped when she started walking in my direction. When she sat beside me, it felt like she chose me. Of course, that couldn’t have been it. I just happened to be on the couch, and she didn’t want to participate in the fun with everyone else.
Juniper smiled tightly and awkwardly at me before looking straight forward. Oh, I hoped she didn’t do that because she felt weird about what she told me. It had been so incredibly personal, and probably mortifying for her. She thought the problem was her instead of that horrid boy, and her father.
Carefully, I tested the waters. My fingers found her hand, and brushed against her skin. Soft and warm. I didn’t look when I felt her hand turn over, exposing her palm to me. I did the same motions on her skin.
I tilted my head against the couch, allowing myself a look at her. The day had become dreary, but not without a little sun. Enough to pour through the open window, and to cast light on her face. She glowed in it; pale skin made to look like porcelain, with mismatched eyes that popped like mad. I couldn’t fathom how a woman as stunning as her, could look in the mirror and not see that. Oh, but I did know. The source of all evil had been and always would remain to be humanity. Cruel for the sake of being cruel, her father tried to ruin her. I wanted that boy dead, but I wanted more for her father.
I could not fix what had been done to her, and it would be naïve of me to think I could have. But I didn’t feel as helpless as I did when she broke before. All I could do—and all I needed to do—was to make her feel safe and cared for. I’d look at Juniper the way she deserved to be looked at. With affection, and reverence, and with the promise to keep her safe from the monsters.
Cerberus looked up at her with sleepy eyes, and he yawned, stretching his little limbs. Barely conscious, he left me in favor of her lap. He collapsed on her and Juniper’s hands went up and away from him, as her eyes widened in fear.
I smiled, and took one of those hands from her. Gently, I made her pet Cerberus, so that she would realize he wouldn’t hurt her. He wouldn’t harm anyone I cared about. Cerberus kicked his leg as he fell under, snoring on Juniper. It made her smile, and my heart swelled.
I let go of her hand, and she still pet the puppy. Her other arm came down, and one of his heads used it as a pillow, resting his paw on it, in what I wouldn’t inform her looked like ownership. Juniper didn’t look like she minded the contact. She looked peaceful, and I needed that to last.
Mum walked up to us, smiling as she usually did. “I should head out, luv,” she told me. “I’m going to take a nap.”
I smiled back at her. “I’ll be back home soon.”
She bent to kiss my cheek and pat my arm. “See ya later, Juniper,” she said to the girl at my side. “I hope you’re feeling better soon.”
Juniper’s forehead wrinkled. “Huh? I’m fine.”
Mum waved her hand. “You will be. Don’t worry about it.”
She pet Cerberus, and then my mother left the house.
Things started settling down quickly after that. Jasper took Kizzy to his workshop, like he normally did. Their own little private place to spend time together. I wanted a place like that for Juniper and I. Somewhere quiet for her. I would have to look into that . . .
Jasmine said something about dinner around the same time Cerberus woke up. Zander offered to take him out to the backyard for some play time, and Juniper said she would drive with Jasmine to pick up some food. They didn’t invite me to dinner, but that didn’t bother me. Juniper probably needed a break from me anyway.
I couldn’t lie and say she didn’t hurt my feelings just a bit before. Assuming I wanted her for sex. I suppose because of me as a person, she might possibly have jumped to that conclusion with justification. I didn’t think telling her I’d only been with two girls in my life would help the matter much. Or that those girls hadn’t been around for long, because I spent most of my life taking care of my mother. Turned out, girls found that pathetic more than they found it sweet. Or at least the girls in my life. I didn’t think Juniper would’ve been that kind. She wouldn’t try and drag me out for a night of fun, and get angry with me when I said I needed to check on Mum. No, she would’ve been too kind for that.
I should’ve probably headed back home, because being there alone didn’t do much good for me. Without Juniper to focus on, all those ugly feelings leaked back into my body. Horrid pictures of what that boy would have done to her if her father hadn’t come along. And equally horrid images of the look in her eyes when her father told Juniper she made it hard to love her. Such an awful lie, and one that I couldn’t imagine telling a child. Especially his own. If I told my mother what he did, she would go down to his house and end him herself. My mother was everything a parent should’ve been.
“Verin,” Zander said from behind me before I reached the door.
I turned, seeing Cerberus hop up onto the couch while Zander strode back in. He stopped, and leaned against the wall. “Where are you going?”
“Home. I need to . . . I need to not be here right now.”
His arms crossed over his chest, and I watched his gaze go to the carpet. “Something wrong?” he asked knowingly.
I didn’t want to tell him Juniper’s story, because I didn’t have the right to. But I wouldn’t lie. “I’m upset right now, and I would rather the next time Juniper saw me, she didn’t know just how much.”
He looked up at me again, face so perfectly blank that it must have taken him years to learn how to lie that well. The man that felt too much, needed to pretend he didn’t feel anything.
“I feel it, ya know. That rot in your chest right now. The fire that you can’t decide if you want to smother or stoke. I know what that feels like to own.”
I nodded. “Kizzy told me.”
Zander didn’t react one way or another, so I assumed he already knew. “Yeah, she said that.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No,” he said quietly. “You felt it anyway, didn’t you?”
I nodded. The man had been marked, and I felt it the moment we met. Different than the others who’d taken a life. His mark felt darker than theirs. His kills meant something else to him.
“Why are you so angry right now?” he asked me.
I finally turned away from the door, but I did nothing to close the distance between us. “Are we going to pretend that you don’t know why? That you c
an’t feel this special and specific brand of pain? Come on, Zander.” I smiled. “Let’s not play games.”
The man smiled at me as well, taking a few strides away from the wall. “Fair enough. She told you a story, didn’t she?”
“She did.”
“Her father?”
I nodded once.
Zander stopped a few feet from me, looking out the window as the rain sprinkled down. “Did I tell you I broke his leg once? That’s why he was limping around last time he was here.”
I smiled shamelessly. “You broke his leg? What did he do?”
Zander shrugged. “Same shit he always does. Comes by the house, hurts someone I love. I have to feel it, Verin. I have to feel what they feel when they see him. All the old pain in their souls when they think about what he did to them. I love them all, but then there’s Jasmine.” His eyes closed, and he didn’t have to explain it to me, because I understood perfectly. “I can’t describe that kind of ache properly. I don’t want her to hurt anymore.”
“I don’t want that for Juniper,” I said.
The corner of his lip twitched. “I don’t know what she told you he did, but I know that you’re aware there was more than one incident. Their entire lives were an incident. I think you need to know that.” He paused, and his fingers tightened into a fist as he swallowed. “Because of Juniper, and what I know you feel for her, you deserve to know the truth. I think it’s the only way you’ll be able to treat her the way she needs. You should go in with eyes wide open.”
I felt genuine terror growing in my chest. Something new for me. But he was right; I needed to know.
So, he told me.
“Their mother left them when they were toddlers,” he started. “And their father was bitter, as you can imagine. Every chance he got, he made them feel inadequate. But he kept them, and it made him believe that they should have been grateful. He still thinks that. They used to give him money to get by, and then we got here. They started figuring things out . . . ” Zander stopped, and rubbed his jaw. “Jasper first. He realized it wasn’t okay that his father would smack him when he did something ‘wrong’ or that they were giving him money for what was pretty much eighteen years of constant abuse.
“You know how their visions work, right?”
“Yes,” I said flatly. “It was explained to me.”
Zander sighed. “Their father isn’t one to miss an opportunity when it pops up. When they were little, he made them get information for him. Peek in on people he knew, get dirt, and then he would blackmail them with it. Ya know, normal piece of shit stuff.”
I swallowed, my body already starting to tremble with anger. I knew it would only get worse. Zander eased me into something that would most likely give me nightmares for the rest of my days. My Juniper, being hurt by this man.
“They were punished when they wouldn’t do it,” he went on. “They had a kennel in the backyard. You know what that is?”
“A dog kennel?” I growled.
“He had rocks instead of grass. He’d make the kids take turns sleeping in it at night. In the rain, and snow, and cold. It’s a miracle that they’re alive.”
My heart already pounded, and breath wouldn’t come to me without a fight. I didn’t feel only rage anymore. Sorrow and grief that children had to live in a place like that mixed with the anger. Children already abandoned by their mother, and left with a monster in her place. The fact that Juniper was one of them only made it worse. And Jasmine . . . that sweet girl with so much happiness in her eyes. Or Jasper, with protectiveness for his sisters that I admired. All of those children, in a living hell.
“I’m sorry,” Zander whispered. “But there’s a lot more to tell you.”
My heart already dropped out from under me, but I didn’t stop him from talking. I needed to know.
“There were pictures that Kizzy found,” he said. “Pictures he took when they would mess up, or when he decided they were messing up. Spilling something, breaking something. Anything that could be frozen in time and looked back on with humiliation.
“We burned it,” he added. “Kizzy set it on fire, and those pictures don’t exist anymore. But I saw them . . . I saw pictures of my family crying, looking into a camera with absolutely no fight in them. Broken.”
He cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes. “I couldn’t take it anymore the last time I saw him. He’d hit Jasmine and . . . ”
“He hit her?” I asked, my voice odd and scratchy.
Zander nodded his head. “I wasn’t there for that, or things would have been different. Juniper was, and she kicked him out. That was the last straw for her. I honestly didn’t think he would have come by again after I broke his leg, but then I found out about what he did to Juniper in the kitchen.”
Sighing, he said, “This won’t ever stop. That man is blackness, and hate, and evil. All he brings with him is painful memories that these people don’t deserve. I want more for them.”
I watched his eyes change into something more than what they used to be. The blue may as well have been black, for all the hate they held in them. Juniper didn’t belong to him, but that did nothing to lessen the anger. Juniper was mine, and it did absolutely everything to amplify it in me. Her face while her father did that, and the way she shattered . . . Someone broke my person.
“Where does he live?” I asked, my voice ice.
Zander blinked, unchanged as he gave me an address.
I felt it in me before I consciously made the choice. The little black mark started to settle into my soul. Fine by me.
I walked out the door, and the rain sprinkled down on me, doing nothing to soothe the heat on my skin. It would be there until I handled this. It reminded me of what had to be done.
I got into my car and started driving. For all the anger, I drove at a reasonable pace. I didn’t want anything to slow me down further. This needed to be resolved. I didn’t ask Zander why the man still lived, because I knew why. That was fine, because now it would be me who got to finish it. Juniper had been all alone while her siblings found people to soothe them. I couldn’t do anything else make up for my absence. I should have run to her sooner.
When I got to his house, I parked down the street. I doubted anyone would know I came, but why would I take the risk? It would be too much trouble for my father to have to bail me out. He would, but I would rather not bother him with it. I wanted to do this on my own.
With a deep breath, I opened my car door and got out. The rain picked up since I started driving, and it took me moments before it covered me. I couldn’t feel the cold right then, so it hardly mattered.
I knocked on the front door with my knuckles, not wanting the man to think someone hostile visited. I needed the door intact.
The moment it opened, he saw me, eyes wide.
I smiled, and shoved him into the house.
Closing the door behind me, I made sure no one would see us. I locked it, and turned to face the man on the floor. He stared up at me, panting as he scooted backward. Ah, the damaged leg wouldn’t allow him to run fast. It wouldn’t have mattered either way.
I looked around at the house that they had all been tortured in. Where he hit them, and yelled, and told them lies. Made Juniper think she had no worth. He put those lies so deep into her skull that they might never crawl out. Everything in me said to make them go away. To fix what he broke. I knew I couldn’t. I knew that even in a decade, two, she would probably feel this way about herself. At least in one small corner of her brain. When an already broken person broke, nothing could ever wholly fix it.
Her father knew what I came for, and that made me glad. I wanted him to know what came to him, and that he earned it. He chose this fate for himself when he decided he wouldn’t be a father. Whatever ugly thing inside of him caused it, I didn’t care. I didn’t want his excuses. They didn’t matter.
I wanted him afraid, so I walked slower, and smiled wider. I heard it in every panted breath, and I saw it in the way his hands trembled
as he tried to get up. I let the man, because I wanted to play.
He got to his feet, and started running through his home, with me just behind him. He made it to his bedroom, and shut the door. I could have put my hand out to stop it, but I could get in either way. I let him have a few seconds where he thought that he had a chance to get away. Maybe the man would try to crawl out a window, or call for help. I would just have to kill whoever showed up. Mr. Nelson might not have known what I was, but something in him must have felt it. Felt what would happen to him.
When I reached the door, I turned the knob. Locked . . . but that meant nothing. I turned it, and the lock broke under my hand. When it swung open, the man stood on the other side of the room, clutching a bat in his hands, and gasping. For someone who enjoyed making others feel weak, he didn’t seem to handle it for himself all that well.
I strode in, slowly and steadily. My eyes stayed on his as he held the bat up. When he swung, I caught it without turning my head. The man shook when he realized I had so much more strength than he did. That did it, and he should understand what he faced.
Ripping the bat out of his hands, I grabbed him with my other. I held him off the ground by the throat while I tossed the bat across the room. Juniper’s father scratched at my arm, pleading with me to let go. Begging.
Ah, desperate. It made me happy.
I threw his body onto the floor, and his broken leg landed all wrong, and he screamed out in pain. I enjoyed the sound.
I joined him on the floor, crouching down so that I could finish what I started. Mr. Nelson stared at me, still pleading as he crumpled. I didn’t tell him why I did this, because he already knew. He had to know that one of us would want this. If he didn’t, then he had been more of a fool than I thought.
I took the arm that reached out to me, and I snapped it with my hands. His scream sounded more like a gasp as he fell back against the floor. He still looked desperate as he wheezed and cried out. That hope in his eyes would be gone soon.
I laid my hand on his chest, right where his heart should have been. I pressed down slowly, listening to bones pop, and waiting for his lungs to collapse. He gasped again, and his heart raced so hard that I thought it would go into cardiac arrest before I finished. That would have been a shame. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. He began drowning in his own blood, at the pressing of my hand. This would be easy to cover up. Just knock down that pretty bookshelf onto his body. No one would think about it. He would leave this world, no one caring.
