Watercolour Smile (10 page)

“Drink himself to death with?”

“Basically.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I know. Want to play a game?” He seemed to be trying to change the subject. There was an uncomfortable look in his eye, and he kept glancing toward the door.

“Sure.”

His smile stretched easily, apparently relieved that we didn’t have to continue the conversation, and then he was standing and leading the way back to the media room. He clicked on one of the gaming systems and handed me a controller.

“We’ll play Nazi Zombies,” he said.

I stared at the screen: at the boarded-up room, and at my soldier character on screen. I saw a zombie trying to break through the planks on the window, and everything rushed back to me.

“Are you drinking straight vodka?”

I blinked, my hands beginning to tremble.

“Whoa, no need to get all feisty. It’s a little unnerving with those eyes of yours.”

I felt the bump of Aiden’s nose, saw the closeness of his different-coloured irises as he tried to show me that I wasn’t a freak, or if I was, then so was he.

I dropped the controller and turned away from the familiar game, burrowing my head into the couch-cushion.

“Seph?” Tariq shook my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Not this game,” I croaked.

“Oh, ah… okay, sure. We’ll play something else.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon with Tariq, and as it neared evening Silas came to fetch me. We drove in his Jaguar to my father’s house and stopped outside of it.

“You ready for this?” Silas asked.

I nodded, and he handed me an envelope.

“What are the chances of me convincing you to stay in the car for this?” I asked.

“Laughable,” he said, without a trace of humour in his tone.

I walked to the door, Silas following close behind me. The door was unlocked, the house dark, but I didn’t let that silence my frazzled nerves. I walked quietly, stepping as lightly and quickly as I could, at a pace that I had taught myself long ago. I avoided the noisier parts of the floor and Silas was a hulking, silent shadow behind me. It was a little scary that someone so much larger than me could be just as quiet as I was being. I walked up the stairs and down the hallway to my father’s bedroom, pushing the door open. I hated to admit it, but I never would have been so bold if Silas hadn’t been standing behind me.

Gerald was sitting on the bed, a television remote in his hands, his head lolling to the side as he slept. Despite the warm and stagnant air, the blankets were pulled up around his chest.

“Stay here,” I whispered to Silas, slipping forward to place the envelope on the edge of his bed.

I paused, my hand still on the envelope, my breath snagging in my throat. My father’s chest wasn’t moving and he wasn’t snoring. Either he was in a
very
deep sleep, or else…

“Gerald?” I asked, raising my voice just as a thump sounded behind me.

I spun around as Silas collided with the side of the doorframe, a massive man standing behind him with a baseball bat, tattoos scratched all over his bald head. Silas pushed off with one arm and caught the second swing of the bat with the other, surprising the guy with how quickly he had recovered. I started forward, but an arm caught me from behind, forcing me back. My father’s closet door was hanging open, and a slender man had just stepped out of it. Silver flickered and I felt the cold prick of something against my throat.

“Don’t move,” a voice said in my ear. “Don’t say a word.”

I swallowed my scream and watched as Silas finally wrenched the bat away from the bald man. He tossed it over the stair railing and it landed on the floor below with a thud. The bald man swung at him but he ducked fluidly, raising his hands and falling back onto the balls of his feet. He danced away from the man’s meaty fists like his opponent was moving in slow motion, striking back with a merciless recoil that always seemed to catch the other man by surprise.

The scene faded before me, showing me a different, but somehow similar vision.

A hand whipped out, catching the boy across the face. Judging by the swelling in the right side of his face, it wasn’t the first blow that he had suffered. I felt sorry for him, but I also wished that he would stop laughing, and start fighting back. He looked strong. I wished I was that strong.

I
wished
I could fight. Why wasn’t he?

I forced the image out of my head, needing to expel actual
effort
to drag myself back into the present. Now wasn’t the time to be entertaining possibly schizophrenic flashbacks.

“Quit playing.” The bald man was angry, his face mottled and his breathing choppy with a wheeze of pain. He finally hooked Silas and moved to slam him back against the balcony railing.

Silas twisted as his spine brushed the balustrade. He slammed his elbow into the base of the other man’s throat, and then bent and grabbed his legs. I watched as Silas heaved, sending a man twice his size over the balcony railing, his back muscles straining like they were about to pop out. I heard the crash below, and watched with growing apprehension as Silas leapt over the balcony after him, apparently landing right on top of him… if the shout was anything to go by. The guy holding me let go of a breathy laugh.

“Well I never… you’ve got quite a fighter there.”

“What—” I started to speak, but the knife pressed closer, stinging me.

“I didn’t say you could speak yet,” the man chided softly. “Now I’m going to move the knife, and I want you to be a good girl and tell me who you are. If you call out to your friend, I’ll slit your throat. Understood?”

I couldn’t nod without digging the knife deeper, so I tapped on his arm instead. He moved the knife away, slightly.

“His daughter.” I pointed to the bed, where my father still sat. “W-what did you do to him?”

“Shot him in the dick. Covered it up with a blanket when I saw your car pull up outside. Want to see?”

My stomach roiled and I tried to pitch forward, but he caught me and held me back, the knife creeping back to my throat.

“Oh my god,” I groaned, fighting the spinning nausea.

“They kept
you
nice and hidden,” the man said, his nose in my hair, his hand creeping around my stomach. “We might have worked out a different arrangement, if I had known he had a second kid.”

“I don’t understand.” I shoved his hand away from my body savagely, and he anchored my hands to my sides by looping his arm around me in an iron band and jolting me back into his chest. 

“There ain’t much to understand, sweet-pea. We’re under orders to rough-up papa-bear and deliver a message to his kid.”

Silas appeared in the doorway then, having made quick work of the bald man. He froze, his hand flicking to his belt like he was reaching for a weapon, but there was nothing there. His fingers flexed, his dark eyes narrowed on the knife at my throat, and then he straightened and leaned against the frame again.

Casually
. Like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“What do you want?” His voice was too quiet, and his eyes were pitch black, lit from within by a liquid inferno. It penetrated me in a mist, seeping through my pores with the power to disintegrate me from the inside, leaving nothing but ash as he walked away. 

“That’s a real pretty car you got out there,” the man said against my hair. “Give me the keys, and I’m taking the girl.”

Silas paused, his fingers twitching, and the knife bit into my neck again. I felt a bead of blood trickle slowly down to my chest, and Silas’s eyes followed it for a moment, his expression unreadable.

“Take the car, no girl, and I won’t kill you and your partner on the way out of here,” Silas answered.

“I could just kill her,” the man offered, his arm shifting until he cupped one of my breasts. “It wouldn’t be ideal, but I’d still do it. We’re under pretty strict orders, you see.” He laughed, his fingers kneading me. “Our boss is
real
interested in Gerald’s kid. We didn’t know about
this
one,” squeeze, “two of them would be better,” another squeeze, “but if I have to kill her…”

Dark fury flashed through Silas’s mask; severe and acrid, and I felt the sweep of emotion from where he stood, it thrummed heavily through me, pounding in my head and threatening to make me sick. The valcrick tried to rise in response, but I pushed it down. The last thing I needed to do was jolt the man holding a knife to my neck. The fury faded as quickly as it had appeared, and astoundingly, a smile spread over his face.

I had seen Silas smile, but nothing like this. It was arctic and it made his whole persona transform from dark and deadly to otherworldly malevolent. I knew that it had an effect on the man behind me, because I could feel him tensing, and the blade trembled painfully against my neck. His hand fell away from my chest.

“
Choose
.” Silas waved an uncaring hand, the terrible smile still in place. “The car or the girl, you can’t have both. How much would she be worth to your boss?”

“I’ll take her.”

“Get out of my sight before I change my mind.”

“Walk in front of us,” my captor warned. “With your hands where I can see them.”

Silas spun on his heel and retreated out of the room. The guy pushed me to the side, grabbing onto my arm and holding the knife at my collarbone as he dragged me along beside him. We followed Silas down into the living room.

“I don’t think Shrek is going to wake up,” Silas said casually. “Not today, at least.”

My captor didn’t even look over at his unconscious partner. He moved past Silas and walked backwards to the front door, keeping his eyes on Silas the entire time.

“Go upstairs and lock the door,” he warned. “You won’t be following us.”

“Enjoy her,” Silas said in return, heading for the stairs obediently. “She has a unique… spark.”

The guy only grunted in reply and then he was hauling me out the front door. As soon as we stepped out of the cover of the house the knife disappeared into the folds of his jacket. I let out a sigh of relief and stopped walking.

“Finally,” I grumbled, lifting my arms.

“Wha—” the word never got a chance to form.

The valcrick spiked from my fingers and hit him directly in the chest, sending him flying right back through the doorway into the house. I might have been a little too harsh, but I could still feel his hands on me, and so I couldn’t muster any guilt at the curl of smoke that I caught floating away from his chest. I had taken barely two steps before Silas was grabbing him and hauling him back to the bald man. The fury was back, edging his usually fluid movements and turning them jerky and sharp. He sat the two men together back-to-back and then fished out their phones, storing them in his pocket. He started rummaging around the house and I didn’t dare speak as he came back with a once-green rope. It was old, a little frayed, and stained brown in places. He tested it, twisting it around each of his hands and yanking in several places. When the rope didn’t snap, he used it to tie the men together at the neck, tightening it until it began to bite into their skin.

“Silas… they’ll choke.” I stepped forward and he whipped around, silencing me with a look. It was the same malevolence as before, but there was something… detached about it. He had stepped out of himself, and his monster had taken over.

I swallowed down the rise of fear, because he would feel it, and stepped back lightly instead of recoiling. He continued watching me, tracking my movements, and I stopped.

“Silas…”

There was no change. He flicked his eyes over me and they got caught on my neck. I saw the fury again and this time I did recoil. He spun back around and wrapped the rope around their necks again and again, giving them a coiled, joined collar, before knotting it and pulling it even tighter, his boot against the bald giant’s shoulder providing the leverage he needed. He moved to me once he was finished, and I took a step back for each of his steps forward, until I was once again in the threshold of the front door. He stopped then, and turned, heading into the kitchen. He hunted around the kitchen drawers for a lighter, and then he slammed the kitchen window closed. He moved around the bottom level of the house closing doors, latching windows, and then he disappeared upstairs and I heard the same slamming throughout the rest of the house.

Keeping a firm hold on my terror, I ran to the laundry and re-opened the door and window, and then did the same in the dining room, which faced into the backyard. I only dared to open two of the windows in the sitting room where the bald giant and my captor were tied, and I covered them with a curtain before sprinting back to the front door as Silas stalked back down the stairs. He walked to my captor and wrenched open his mouth, placing a box of matches onto his tongue. He did the same with the other guy, and then he dropped a lighter onto the floor a few feet away from them.

On his way out, he turned on the gas stove.

He didn’t even look back as he approached the front door, and I quickly got out of his way. He slammed the door shut and I saw the envelope of money that I was supposed to give my father sticking out of his back pocket. He locked the door with my set of keys and then threw my keys into the garden, reaching for my arm. I wanted to jump away from him but I held firm, walking stiffly beside him, back to the Jaguar. He opened the passenger door and I obediently sat. I wasn’t sure what to do, because I had never actually seen this side of Silas—I had seen hints of it, but never the full transformation.

He was less than a human, more than a man, and halfway to an animal.

As we drove away, I looked up at the second story of the house, waiting for the tears that never came.