Nick: Justice Series (10 page)

“The knife was still in my hand and I used it on his forehead. I never realized how much power you needed to put one of them things in a person’s head before. Anyway, when he hit the floor I could see that everyone was shocked, and I moved into the room, picking up the poker as I went. Mrs. Weeks started screaming and I hit her with it. Not enough to kill her, but to shut her up.”

The older woman sitting on the couch just fainted. Ellen had never actually seen anyone do that before and thought perhaps she’d killed her by all this. But as soon as she told the kids, the birthday girl and two more, as well as one of the other sons, to stand by the wall, the old woman woke up.

“Now, we’re going to have some fun.” The older woman started screaming, and Ellen lifted the poker and told her to shut up. “I don’t like that sound. It goes through my head like a nail. Stop it.”

Ellen moved around the room then and looked at all the gifts. There was a doll that she’d wanted when she’d had her party, but no one had bothered to get it for her. Her mom had said things were too expensive and that she’d have to save her money and get it on her own. But here little Lily had one, and they were poorer than her family was.

Picking up the doll and noticing that she had gotten blood on it, she handed it to Lily. When she wouldn’t take it, Ellen hit her with it. When she fell to the floor, Ellen tossed the doll at her and beat her head in with the poker. The wailing started again. Just a look from her had the woman stopping.

The old man was little to no help in getting everyone tied up. She’d just about killed him quickly twice when he’d begged her to let them go. Tying everyone to their beds had been okay, but now the fun work was going to start.

“I started on the old woman. She had to go first because she was driving me insane. But she proved in the long run to be the most enjoyable. I was able to cut out her heart while it was still beating. Have you ever seen such a sight as that?”

“No.” Ellen didn’t look at Joel again. He looked like he was disgusted with her. Not that she really cared, but he’d asked for a story and she was going to give him one. “How long did you work on them?”

“Three days there. Two at the Jefferson’s house, and not long at all at my parents’ house. Do you suppose that they’re around? Oh, I’d so love to talk to them now. Ask them if they ever thought of me when I was locked away. How could that have happened to me? I didn’t really do that much wrong, did I?” She was kidding him. Ellen knew exactly what she’d done, and what else she was going to do too. “I killed another family as soon as I was out. They lived here too. The Hicks family. They were not as much fun as I’d hoped. I guess I had a lot of pent up anger by then. I pretended to really like the oldest son. He was such a drip. But he led me right to his family, and who was I to turn them down?”

“What are you going to do to my fiancée when she gets here? I mean, I can’t help you that much, but I’d really like to be here when you’re working on her.” Ellen looked at Joel and could see something in his eyes, but was not sure what it was. Anger? Sickness? She had no idea but asked him why. “Because I told her that I never give up on something once I’ve made up my mind. And my mind was made up to have her. She’s mine. Now and forever.”

Ellen got up and got her a glass of water. She could hardly contain herself over this news. It was as if they were meant to be together. When she told him that she’d let him watch her, she was happy to see him smile. Such a pretty man to be frowning all the time. But when Dane came into the room with a pizza and a delivery person, she decided that they all might have their uses, and told the man to set the box on the table. The kid was dead before he even pulled out the ticket.

The fifty-one dollars in his pockets was going to be helpful as well. But his phone was shot. The thing was dead, and as far as she could find in his car, there wasn’t a charger either. But there was more food. Taking the boxes of pizzas and subs into the house, she asked Dane how he had managed it.

“We can tell some of them what to do. Like whisper in their ears to do this or that. One time I had me one of those big money trucks open up his back doors and walk away. But he didn’t get far before the cops that was around when you don’t need them brought him back. Nobody got a dime of that money either.”

Stashing away the food, she looked at her dead pizza boy. They were no fun at all when they didn’t scream. She should have been more careful. Ellen moved the body off the floor and to the basement door. She was ready to kick him down there when she saw something moving.

“What is that?” Dane moved to look over her shoulder and told her he didn’t see anything. “You have more deadies down there? More like you? Go look.” Dane moved down the stairs and Ellen looked for Joel. She wanted to ask his advice on how to best keep the smell out of the house, but he was gone. Dane came up a few minutes later and told her that there wasn’t a thing down there. “I know I saw something. I’m going to keep an eye out for them. If you’re lying to me, I won’t help you.”

“I’m not lying.” But he looked down the steps again before speaking. “I felt something, but it wasn’t the dead. Not like us. I don’t want to go back down there though. Not ever.”

Ellen moved to go down the stairs herself, if for no other reason than to show off. But there was something down there, if only a feeling that should she go alone to the basement, she’d not come up the same again. Closing the door, she looked at the pizza guy.

“I’m going to take him to the barn. And we’ll have to…well, I’ll have to do something with his car. I’m not any good at driving, but I’ll have to put it in there too.”

Dane told her he could help her with that and entered her body. Ellen stood there for several seconds, just marveling at the feeling of his body within hers. But she also felt sick to her stomach, and hurried out to the car. Before she even got it started and moved, she’d thrown up twice. This wasn’t anything she was going to repeat either.

The car was shut up in the garage, the body was wrapped up in some tarps that she’d found, and by the time she’d made it back to the kitchen, she was a mess and covered in slimy dirt. Starving, she took out the now cold pizza and ate, plotting about all the shit she was going to do as soon as the living started coming in. Yes, sir, she was going to be the best skinner in the world.

Chapter 10

Addie entered the bedroom to talk to Nick. She needed to talk to him about what was going to happen. There wasn’t any way she was going to be able to stand up to Joel. He was mean when he was alive, and she had a feeling he was going to be an even meaner ghost. But the sound of the shower running had her mind going in a different direction, and she started stripping down even before she opened the bathroom door.

It was a huge bathroom. The shower stall alone was big enough for several people. And the wall of clear block let in all the light from the outside, making the room and the man standing in the stall a very beautiful setting.

Nick was leaning against the wall, the water spraying down over his back, and she could see the scars then. All of them had been put on his body so long ago, but she was sure that he knew each of them. Could tell her when his stepfather had put them there, the reason he’d given for doing it, and Nick would remember the pain like it was just yesterday.

When they’d made love before, it had been so quick that she’d seen little more than his chest. But she had a feeling that very few, if any, had seen all of him. Stepping in behind him, she put her hands on his shoulders and down around his chest.

“I was thinking about you.” He started to turn around, and she stopped him. “I can’t stand for anyone to see me like this. Let me turn.”

“No. I want to see them.” He was stiff under her fingers, his body a hard mass of muscles that seemed to ripple when she ran her fingers over them. Kissing the first scar that ran along his back, she asked him what Dane had used.

“Mostly it was his belt. But he’d taken to putting things like screws or nails in the holes so that it would hurt more. Draw more blood and cause a lot more pain to me. He said that it made the slide into me sexier.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t tell anyone what happened to me. There’s a reason for it, but I don’t want to talk about it.”

“All right.” She ran her fingers over each one of the scars. There were three dozen or more of them, and she leaned in to kiss them when she’d finished. “Aster told me that you killed him one night. That you’d rammed something into his chest and killed him. I’m glad. He might have killed you if you hadn’t.”

“Addie, I don’t want to talk about this.” She didn’t say anything this time, but continued to touch him. His body was relaxing…she could feel it become more pliable under her hands, the skin smoothing out. “You’re making me as hard as a rock.”

“I’m going to suck on your cock when I’m finished exploring you. We were in such a hurry before, and now I want to see you.” His ass was badly scarred too. There were welts that went from one hip to the other across him, and she felt her heart ache for the child that he’d been. “Your skin tastes so good to me.”

When he tried to turn this time, she let him. His cock was thick and straining from the curls at his groin. When she put her hand on his cock, wrapping her fingers around him, he leaned back against the wall and watched her. Addie knelt down and licked the crown, and then sucked him into her mouth.

“Yes.” He held her to him, fucking her mouth slowly, gently. The water spraying over her head and body was turned off, and she looked up at him while he moved. Never letting him go from her mouth, she followed him to the shower seat and only let him go when he pulled her up.

“I want you.” He nodded and leaned back, but he didn’t let her touch him with her mouth. “Please let me taste you.”

“Ride me. Come up here on my lap and let me suck your nipples while you fuck my cock. That’s what I was thinking about when you came in here. How I was going to do this with you.”

The dream. She knew that was what he’d been thinking about, and was why they were in the shower and not the bed. Standing up, she moved her knee to straddle him when he pulled her pussy to his mouth. She cried out when he sucked hard onto her clit. She rode his mouth like this until he pulled back.

Settling over him took some doing. There wasn’t a lot of room on the bench, and it was slippery. When she finally had his cock at her entrance, Addie lowered herself over him, holding onto his shoulders. He held her to him as she let her body adjust to having him inside of her.

“You’re so hot. I don’t mean that you’re beautiful, because you are. But hot because your pussy is hot.” He rolled his hips upward and she moaned. “Don’t hurry, love. I want to watch you come like this so I can see it in your eyes when you do.”

Addie stared into his eyes. There was something very soulful about it, the way that the two of them seemed to be connected on a level that no one else would ever reach. As she rode him, her body swaying back and forth over his, all she could think about was that he was going to fill her. And take her to such heights that she’d never be the same afterwards.

When he stood up, pressing her body against the wall he’d been standing at, she wrapped her legs around him and let him pound her. They were hard, deep strokes that made her feel like he was trying to come through her. When he came, crying out her name as he did, she held him to her. When he sobbed, his body wracked with his pain, she held him to her.

“He raped me and my sister nightly. First one of us, then the other. He said it was our duty to give him what he wanted because he put a roof over our head. I had pointed out once that the government had done that, not him, and he beat me. It wasn’t the first time, but it was the first time he put me in the hospital.” Addie didn’t speak. She wasn’t even sure that she could, much less what she might say to him. “My mother was so stoned or drunk that she’d just lay there on the bed beside us while he was doing these things to us, snoring her life away. Her own children were screaming out their pain, and she didn’t care.”

He didn’t say anything for a time and when he did, she felt her entire body start to chill, then freeze. How could anyone be as cruel as this man was?

“Then it was the night of my birthday that he came to the house. I was still nursing a wound in my arm that he’d given me, but Ana and I were going to have a nice little dinner. A slice of bread each with peanut butter spread over it as frosting. Dane came in with four of his buddies from prison.” Addie wanted to tell him she didn’t want to hear any more, but he continued. “After they beat the shit out of me and tied me to the bed, each of them took turns fucking me. No matter how many times I screamed or how loudly, no one came to help me. Ana had to watch us. I think…at some point I just passed out. I think they raped her as well. She was never the same after that. A sadness was there up until I left her. It was after that that I decided that he was going to stop or I was going to kill him.”

When he lifted his head and looked at her, Addie could see the child that he’d been. The pain and the fear that he’d had back then. The emotional scarring that still lingered on the man that he’d become. When he moved her, she stood with him, knowing that if they left his room, there would never be a telling of the rest of the story.

“He’d been in jail for something else a few weeks later. I don’t remember what it was, but Ana, my sister, and I were living it up. We both knew where the stash of money was kept; even the drugs that he sold were in the house. We never bothered that part, but we did have us a grand time with pizzas being delivered and soft drinks. Neither of us had ever had a hot pie until then. Mother was gone a lot. She’d run the streets, telling everyone that her man was locked up. I’m not sure what they thought of her, but I’m sure that it wasn’t good.” Addie asked him what had happened next. “He came home.”

It was more than that and she knew it. But she watched him as he pulled a towel off the warmer and handed it to her. When she was wrapped in it and he had one around his waist, he sat on the commode and her on the counter.

“At first it seemed that he was going to be all right with what we’d done, getting into his money. There wasn’t much, but it was nearly gone when he returned to the apartment. But we should have known better. When he sat down with us and picked up the last piece, Ana asked him if he wanted something to drink. As soon as she stood up, he lashed out with his fist and hit her in the face. She hit the counter behind her and just dropped to the floor. The next fist he swung out with got me square in the head.” Nick looked at her then, like he was trying to judge what she was going to say to him.

“When I came around he’d already taken Ana to the bedroom. She was tied there, her hands and feet wrapped up in tape like he always did. She was on her back this time, something that he’d never done to her before. When he saw me and grabbed for me, I kicked out at his head and knocked him back from me as he tried to get me to stand up and go with him.” As he continued, Nick stood up and stared vacantly into the sink. “The table had been broken at some point. I’m not sure how or when, but there were all kinds of things laying on the floor around me that I threw at him. I kicked too, catching him in the face and head as many times as I could. But I was ready this time. You see, while he’d been locked away, I’d taken to practicing what I’d do should he come after me again. And I had hidden things all over the house that I would be able to grab up and use against him. The screwdriver fit well in my hand, and when I hit him with it in the face…I didn’t stop when he was dead. I stabbed him so many times in the chest that it caved in. His heart had been punctured several times, by not just the screwdriver but his own ribs as well. I never wanted him to get up again. Then…then I ran.”

“You were caught and taken to the hospital, right? They knew it was self-defense.”

He nodded, then shook his head and stood there before he explained. “I could always see the dead. Not a good way to put it, but I could. When it was possible for me to do so, I’d help them out. Find things for them to pass on. Sometimes I’d even contact a family member to let them know. As I lay there dying in that box, one of them came to stay with me while someone else had one of the police come and find me. I was taken to the hospital then, but I was arrested too. For my own safety, they told me.” He didn’t turn yet. “I suppose it was the right thing to do, but I didn’t think so back then.”

“What happened then? Did you get any help? Your sister, what did they do for her?” He told her that she’d been put into the system so that their mother couldn’t find her, that he was in the hospital for so long that he never could find her.

“It was too late then. She’d already killed herself. I might have too if the dead had left me alone. I wasn’t able to help her. Or my mother if she had wanted it. My mind was too…too overwhelmed by then.” He looked at her in the reflection of the mirror. “Mother told them that is was all my fault that Glass was dead. Which, to a point I suppose, is true. I killed him. But when they asked her about the rapes or the scars and fresh lashes on my body, she told them that I fell a lot. And that Ana and I played rough, that was all it was.” His laughter was bitter. “She continued to deny his part in my nearly dying from the rape up until she died of a drug overdose, telling everyone who would listen that it was all my fault. Ana too. Then a few weeks later, she killed herself by going back to the house and taking all the drugs he’d had and using them on herself.”

Addie wrapped her arms around him again. She held him, his back to her, as he stood stiffly near her. When she turned him around forcefully, he pushed her away from him, but she wasn’t having it. Taking his body to hers, she told him to hold her.

“I’m not going to be able to be a good person for long. This has been the longest that I’ve gone without needing to have some help. I go for a while and do okay, but I have depression so bad sometimes that I want to join my sister.” Addie lifted her head from his chest and looked at him. “You might be better off leaving me here. I’m damaged goods. I should never have fallen in love with you.”

“I see. And I get no say in this? Because I have to tell you, you’re a fucking idiot is what you are.” He looked at her then, really looked at her. “You think that after hearing that story that I want to just go, leave you here? Well, of course you do. I would bet that most of your life that’s what you have had happen to you. Get over it. I’m not leaving you.”

“What if I hurt you?” Addie asked him why he thought he’d do that now. “Didn’t you just hear me? Weren’t you listening to what I said to you?”

“I heard you. And I’m so very sorry that it happened to you, more than I could ever say, but you’re stronger now than you were then. And I don’t mean physically. You’re a better…you’re not even related to him. How do you…do you think you’ll turn out like him?”

“No. That’s not what I meant. I meant…I meant….” She asked him what he meant. “What if I decide that I can’t take this anymore and kill myself? What if I decided to take drugs and become like—?”

Addie slapped him across the face. He stared at her with his hand over the place she’d hit him. “Stop that right now. What if you do all sorts of things that you shouldn’t? I do them all the time, and that doesn’t mean that I’m going to kill myself over them. I might hurt me being stupid, but not because I tried to kill myself. You won’t either. Do you think that I’m not going to be here for you? Be someone that you can talk to? And if you were going to be a drug addict, I’m pretty sure you would have done it before now.”

“You hit me.” Crossing her arms over her chest, she glared at him. “You actually just hit me. I can’t believe you hit me.”

“Why not? I mean, when you’re going to act like a baby, then I’m going to have to treat you like one.” Addie pulled his hand from his cheek. “It’s not even red. Stop being a whiny puss.”