Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) (33 page)

After a month or so, however, Lucie’s questions became more pointed and quarrelsome. She was beginning to feel as much a hostage as Juliana had felt from the very first day. But none of the Horde—not Connor, not Bart, not Hoosier—would entertain any discussion about how long it would last or how it would end.

Juliana’s nights became full of dreams of running. When she slept at all. When she didn’t sleep, she worried about Trick.

And then, without any kind of warning, Bart came home one afternoon and called her into the foyer. When she came to the front of the house, Trick was standing at the door, between Bart and Connor.

If not for the ink on his arms, she might not have recognized him. His hair and beard were matted. He’d lost at least twenty pounds from his already lean frame. Maybe more. His face was mottled with old and new bruises. He smiled when he saw her, and she saw that he was missing two teeth from the left side of his mouth.

For the weeks they’d been trapped in this house, the weeks since he’d been arrested as a terrorist, Juliana had been at war with doubt. Since she’d fallen in love, she had accepted a lot about Trick’s life, past and present. She had accepted the things he’d done, what she knew about and what she imagined, as either involuntary or necessary. She had come to know him as a moral man, a good man, and so the things he’d done had become irrelevant to the man she’d started making a life with.

But the idea that he’d done something—she still had no idea what—that could be classified as terrorism,
that
she’d struggled to comprehend or accept. One thought kept her calm enough to do what she was told: the truth that the government could and did warp its laws to serve its own ends. Especially DHS. If they could construe an act as terrorism, that gave them nearly limitless power to behave as they wished. Because they were accountable, then, to no one.

She didn’t believe he had done nothing, that they had the ‘wrong man,’ anymore. The behavior of the Horde had quickly convinced her that Trick had done something that served as real grounds for his arrest. So instead she clung to the same thread she’d used to weave her acceptance of his life: whatever he’d done, he’d had no choice. And the government was now using him to suit its whim, as it had done before.

She believed it. But it was frail armor against the onslaught of worry about what she had done to Lucie’s life, and her own, by bringing Trick into it. Despite her love for him, and her overwhelming worry for what he was going through, even as she grew to know all the Horde family much better, to like them all and to love a few, the fear and doubt wanted to wipe all that away.

Then she saw his beaten, emaciated body, and his sad, wary eyes, and her doubt and fear broke apart and burst away. What filled her instead was a righteous anger she hadn’t felt since her parents had been put on a plane and carried away from her forever.

And relief. So much relief and joy.

“Hey, Jules.” His voice was rough and weak.

“God, Trick! Oh, thank God!” She ran to him.

When she reached him and threw her arms around him, he flinched hard, and at first his body was stiff against hers. Then he all but collapsed on her. His arms went around her and held on, and he tucked his face against her neck.

“I love you so much,” she whispered. “So much.”

He didn’t answer, but his shoulders began to shake, and she held him more tightly while he cried.

His face pressed hard against Juliana’s soft neck, Trick flinched when Connor’s hand landed on his shoulder. His friend lifted it right back up.

“Everybody’s on their way here, brother. But take some time with your lady. Decompress.”

He didn’t move until he could sense that Connor and Bart had left the front hall. Juliana let him hold her, and she held him, remaining as still as he needed her to be. They stayed like that, and he breathed her scent in, replacing the stench of where he’d been with that sweet pleasure.

When he had again forced calm over the chaos inside him, Juliana sensed it. She kissed his cheek, lingering at the touch, and then leaned back. “Lucie will be so happy to see you. They kids are out back, playing house.”

“No.” It felt strange to be talking to normal people. He couldn’t let Lucie see him, not now, like this. “I need…uh…I need…”

Her fingers brushed over one of his fresher bruises, and he closed his eyes. “You need a shower. I know. Come upstairs. I have some of your clothes up there, too.”

Yes. A shower. It gave him comfort to remember that she knew him well enough to know what he needed. God, he needed a shower. He needed to boil his skin. He nodded, and she took his hand and led him upstairs.

She led him into one of the guest bedrooms. Trick had never been in any of these rooms. They’d locked down a couple of times here, but he’d always preferred to find a sofa downstairs and crash there. The Elstads’ money unsettled him. So much comfort made him uncomfortable.

Especially now. Now the comfort in this room caused him actual pain, and he closed his eyes. Juliana closed the door and came to him, but when she touched him, tried to hold him again, he felt her touch as more pain than comfort, and he pushed her away.

“Trick?”

“I’m sorry. I just…I…I can’t.”

“Okay. The bathroom’s just there.” She pointed to a door in the far corner of the room. “Everything you need’s in there. I’ll get some clothes out for you, okay?”

He nodded and crossed the room.

Closing himself into the bathroom, he locked the door. Then he turned around.

The room was big, with a fancy bowl for a sink, a deep tub, and a huge shower. There was even a bidet next to the toilet. Everything was tiled in oblong white tiles except for a four-inch swath of dark blue glass tiles. Fluffy while towels hung on thick rods. There were wrapped soaps in green glass dishes, and a tray full of shampoos, conditioners, lotions, and powders.

And this was one of their guest bathrooms. The jarring disparity between where he was and where he’d come from struck him as perversely hilarious. He slid down the door until he had landed on the gleaming floor, and he laughed.

That laughter was no medicine, however. It was harsh and hollow, and it dried quickly up, leaving the same crushing weariness that had been his safest mental state for an eternity.

Connor had told him how long he’d been gone, but he didn’t remember what he’d said. Weeks, he thought. It had seemed longer. It had been timeless.

He got to his feet and stripped out of the black coverall and t-shirt he’d been wearing when his previous life had ended. Once naked, he turned the shower on, using only the hot tap. The Elstads’ water heater pumped out some real temperature, and the water was soon hotter than he could stand.

He stepped in and closed the door.

Focusing on the scalding water on his body, he kept his mind quiet. He wasn’t ready to let anything inside it loose out here in this world.

There was a loofah on a shelf inside the shower, along with more soaps and shampoos. Trick washed and scrubbed until his hands ached, and then he let the loofah fall to the floor and simply stood under the stream until the water turned cool and gave him a chill.

He got out and reached for one of the fluffy white towels. Warmth covered his hand and arm—the rod was heated. Another choked chuckle ripped from his throat. He dried off and wrapped the towel around his waist.

Juliana sat on the bed. He stopped in the doorway, surprised; he’d thought—he’d hoped—she would have left him alone. “Ju—”

Her reaction to seeing him cut her name off his tongue. She rose to her feet, her mouth open. “Trick. My God. Oh God.”

She crossed the room to him. He wanted to get away from her gaze and her touch, but he couldn’t make his feet move, and she reached him and put her hands on him.

He writhed as if her touch hurt him—because it did. There was no sense in that, she wasn’t poking at any of his bruises or wounds, but it was true anyway. “M’okay.”

Undeterred by his discomfort, she continued to study him with her hands and eyes. “No, you are not. Oh God, what did they do?”

“What it looks like they did.” He wasn’t ready for those thoughts. If he took his shoulder off that door in his mind, he’d go crazy and stay there.

Her hands smoothed over his shoulders and down his chest. He wanted the touch to feel good, to soothe him as it had in his previous life. But her hands were made of glass shards, and it was all he could do not to knock her away.

Then her exploration arrived at his nipples, and he grabbed her wrists and broke her touch from his skin.

“God. What happened?”

“Couldn’t keep my metal in. They, uh, helped me with that one.” He tried to laugh, make it a joke, but he couldn’t. They’d ripped it off his chest. The memory of that pain had seared into his body. His skin had stretched shockingly far before it had finally given, and the agony had been red fire.

“It’s infected.” She lightly palpated the hot, swollen wound, and he winced. It was an early wound but had never healed.

“I guess.” He knew. He didn’t especially care, not just then.

Then her eyes went wide and dropped below his waist. She shook her arms from his grip and went for the towel, but he grabbed her again. “No. They let me take that one out.”

When her eyes came back up to his, they swam with unshed tears. “What did they do?”

Her tears would break him. “Don’t, Juliana.” He pushed her away. “I need…I need…some time. Alone.”

“No, you don’t. You need to feel love. You need to talk about what happened. Don’t let it poison you the way the war did. Talk to me. Please talk to me. Get it out.”

There was a stack of clothes on the bed. Assuming they were his, he walked around her and crossed the room, his bruised feet pillowed on thick, plush carpet. He dropped the towel and stepped into a pair of boxer briefs and then his jeans. When he buttoned the fly, they slid down to his thighs and only stopped there because his legs were spread enough to hold them. Anger grew in his belly like a stoked fire. He swiped up his wide, black leather belt and fed it through the loops, closing it on the tightest hole, three in from the one that had worn from daily use. The jeans hung precariously on his hips, bunched around the belt.

“My God, Trick.”

“Stop saying that.” He yanked a white t-shirt over his still-wet head. “God has left the building.”

He felt her hands on his back, and he flinched away and turned to face her. With his hands on her shoulders, he held her off. “What do you want, Jules? You want me to talk? And say what? You want to know about the maggots in the food? The way it was a grey slab of leavings and old meat and made me so sick I shat myself, but I ate it anyway because I was so fucking hungry? You want to know what they did when I did refuse to eat?”
She looked stricken. He was hurting her, he knew it, but he couldn’t stop.

“You want to know what it feels like to be bound and hooded so long that you forget you have eyes or arms or legs? Or what it feels like when the restraints finally come off and all those dead parts try to live again? You want more? There’s more. There’s worse.”

“Yes. Tell me anything—everything. Get it out of you.”

He laughed that same creaky, ugly laugh that had bounced off the tile walls in the bathroom earlier. “Don’t be stupid. It’s carved into me. There’s nowhere for it to go.”

“I love you,” she whispered. “I missed you so much. I was so worried. I didn’t know what was happening. I thought downstairs that being close with me could help you. I just want to help you.”

He had felt comfort when she’d first held him. But something was going on in his head, turning comfort against him, and it was driving him away from her. “You can see what happened. They wanted me to talk. I didn’t. And I don’t want to talk now. You can help by backing the fuck off and LEAVING ME THE FUCK ALONE!” He pushed her.

Juliana took several steps back, reeling to keep her balance, her face slack with shock. He’d yelled so fiercely that he’d hurt his throat. He’d never yelled at her before or touched her in anger. In general, he rarely raised his voice. Immediately, he wanted to apologize, to drop to his knees and beg her to stay with him. He didn’t want to be alone—God! He didn’t want to be alone! But he stood where he was and shut his mouth.

Finally, she wiped her eyes. “Okay. Whatever you need. I’m here. I love you, Trick.”

He stood where he was and shut his mouth. Even after she left the room and closed the door, he stood where he was. Alone.

And then he screwed up some stoic control, pulled on his boots, and went out to face his brothers. Alone.

~oOo~

They all wanted to hug him, but he guessed he looked too hurt and weak, so they all refrained from the typical backslapping that they called hugs. He bore each careful embrace, holding on to his control with both hands.

Keanu handed him a full glass of whiskey. He drank it down—holy shit, it tasted good—and handed the glass back for a refill. He drank that down, too, and then kept hold of the empty glass, knowing he’d swallow every refill down without a pause, and who the fuck knew how he’d be if he got drunk right now. He was already feeling the two glasses he’d swallowed.

Then Connor came forward again, and this time he held up Trick’s kutte. “Brother,” he said, indicating that Trick should turn and let him help him get it on.