Beasts, p.8
Beasts, page 8
Free food is a godsend when it comes to college students, and I’m not about to turn down this offer.
I sheepishly apologize to the receptionists for the commotion and take the goods into my hands, taking a sip of the icy drink to find that my lips pucker at the acidic taste.
It’s not bad, but it’s different from what I usually get. Someone must want lemon in their iced coffee.
I shrug and take a big sip with something nagging in the back of my mind, but I push it away.
Chapter Eight
Isaac
“Are you guys sure you want to take the floor?”
Peering at Holly through the manila folder in my hands, the information of The Butcher has given me an insight as to how the man operates.
This folder had been dropped off to me by my contact at the police station. It’s only beneficial to me if I have my hands dipped in every pool of resources; good or bad, it doesn’t hurt my morals when I decided it does not serve me good to be heroic.
I don’t need the public to understand what I do and why I do it; my only goal is to keep Holly safe and having criminals owing me big debts, I can operate on a morally grey area despite being on the side of the law.
“I’m really fine, the police officers are probably trying to scare you,” she says with her tiny hands plucking the fuzz from her blanket.
Her bedroom is small, but it brings a sense of home to me as my house is too big and empty. I didn’t give her a choice for tonight or for the rest of the days until The Butcher is caught.
I will never take the chance of half-assed effort to protect Holly.
“It’s fine, sweetheart. I want to do this,” I smile as I lean back against the chair that I brought into her room.
Kian had the same idea as I did, but he went with a more direct approach and took a seat at the edge of her pillows.
The moment I took Holly back to this apartment, he was already at the door, stealing her away from me as if he had the right to do that.
The audacity of that man, but I can’t be angry at him for being concerned.
He demanded that she let him stay with her until the threat is neutralized or he’s going to chain her to him if she says no. Holly clearly didn’t see the conviction in his eyes, but I did, and if she did say no, she would be in chains with the key lost down the toilet.
“Go to sleep,” Kian pushes her head down, her ass sticking up in the air and my cock reacted too quickly as it thickens in my pants.
The yellow lamp from her nightstand is the only source of light. She can’t see what she’s doing to my body as she lays down obediently. The covers over her body settle some of the simmering lust in me as I focus back on the files.
Kian doesn’t move; he’s with her like with a guard dog mentality, and his hand is buried in her hair to soothe her. Her confident act is useless. She has no idea that her tense frame and trembling hands signal her anxiety at the situation.
She isn’t afraid of Kian even after the detectives had given convincing circumstantial proof that he could be the killer after her. Her trusting nature can be seen as foolish, I doubt that she wants to be this way, but she is, and it’s the reason why she trusts that we watch over her when she sleeps.
She would be the most vulnerable then and Holly still worried about us taking the floor. Our comfort outweighs her fear. She even offered her bed to us when it was clear we were not going to leave her apartment.
What bothers me more was when I went back to my office, her breath smelled too acidic. She did tell me that her tongue is a bit numb, but she thinks it’s the cup of iced coffee that she had.
A cup of coffee from the same coffee shop that she frequents.
I brought it up to Kian when she was in the shower, and he mentioned that he got more information about the hibiscus that investigators found on The Butcher’s victims.
I may not be an herbal enthusiast, but I know what pure hibiscus tea smells like.
That flower means something to the killer. I just can’t find the connection yet, and I intend on staying up all night to find out.
Pulling all-nighters is common in my line of work. I often gather information about cases, and I find some are too interesting to let go. I can go for three days with just power naps; they are easy and an energy booster.
Time passes in the night; the lamp shines brighter as the sky darkens even more. The moon is covered with black clouds, and silence travels with soft breezes. My back strains against the wooden chair as I peer to my side; no movement from outside catches my attention as the streetlights only provide a certain amount of visibility.
Some places are too dark to see, but we are still good for the night.
That was until Kian stands from the bed, his hand leaving Holly’s thick brown hair and she doesn’t stir one bit while a dog from down the block barks. The howling in the night has a domino effect of other dogs in the neighborhood barking into the streets.
I close the file and hook a finger through the curtain to look at the lights being turned on from neighboring houses; shadows crawl into the windows as some open the curtains to see what the disturbance is about.
Kian comes to the other side of the curtain, tracing the length of the street with his eyes as he looks into the direction that I don’t have sight on. The barking continues as more people turn on their lights; some people open their front doors and turn on the lights in their house.
As people begin to step out of the comfort of their home, I glance back at the sleeping figure under the cover, and it doesn’t sit right with me. She’s sleeping too heavily, even I’m getting a headache from all the yapping from dogs, and she sleeps on without a care.
“Watch her,” Kian tips his head towards me and I nod in agreement.
One of us has to check out the ruckus that has the dogs going crazy, and Kian has more experience in covert operations, given his background in the assassination. This part is his to deal with; he can be a lot stealthier than I am, and he can kill with no consequence drawn to his name.
I’m too much of a public figure to do something this risky without a plan to get rid of a body.
My hearing doesn’t pick up the sound of the front door opening. I don’t have a clue as to which way he slipped out, but I know he’s already boots on the ground. I get away from the window and take Kian’s spot by her pillow. She snoozes away with such innocence that it should be a crime to not call her a princess.
I trace her plump cheek with my knuckle, savoring the softness that caves under my hand as her lashes stay still. Falling down to her lips, my finger drags her bottom lip and pushes down on the pink fleshiness.
I was never the one to deprive myself of what I want, and her defenselessness calls for me as I press my lips to hers.
She’s sweeter than I thought, but still, the strength of her influence over me crosses the line of my self-control. Her lips yield to my force as I pry her teeth open with my tongue and curl it with hers.
It’s a honeyed treat that I indulge myself in, taking advantage of her sleeping form to be a monster that I promise myself not to be. She deserves to be treated with care and gentleness, but I’m breaking that promise as the temptation is too strong for a weak man like me to fight.
“My sweetheart,” I murmur against her lips.
The decision is hard to make; I want to pull back to see her lips swollen and red, but I don’t want to stop feeding on her sweetness.
A scream from a distant shrills above all the barking and my head snaps up in an instinctive primitive to shield Holly’s body from harm. I stay close to her, but the hairs on my arms rise in warning about something creeping in the area.
Something sharp breaks on concrete, and it’s too close for me to believe that it’s not related to the apartment.
Kian isn’t back yet, and he is too much of a professional to make a noise that loud to draw attention to himself. I make the exclusive decision to pick Holly up in my arms and kick open the closet door.
It’s small and tight, but she fits just fine as I tuck her in the corner. Utilizing the boxes in there to shield her from eyes, I make sure she is still asleep, and it hits me again that she should have woken up from the dogs.
I’ll investigate that later, but I need to neutralize the threat that’s coming closer. I can physically feel it in my blood, the danger kicking my protective stance to be a fierce beast that’s on the hunt for the unfortunate soul that I would come across.
I step out of the dull, yellow fluorescent light of her room and into the blackened hall that would lead me to the front door after I tightly shut the bedroom door.
Picking up any sound is hard when there is barking coming from the entire neighborhood, voices from dog owners telling their dogs to be quiet while some are crudely yelling at the aggressive dogs.
They are barking too viciously to be a normal incident. Something must have triggered them to act in their natural instinct to defend themselves.
I scout the backyard, and nothing is out of place; I would notice something out of place when I have been studying the apartment when I was monitoring Holly for those weeks before I made contact with her.
It is not stalking. It is covert protection.
I deem the backyard is untouched. The front lawn is my next area as something catches my attention from the distance at a neighbor’s backyard.
A figure is covertly moving through the darkness, but my sharp eyes catch a shape of legs. He’s running on two legs yet hunched at the calves with arms bent at the front; the structure of the body is too inhuman, and it’s fucking disturbing to know that something like that exists.
Whatever it is, it ran from the swings from the neighbor’s house to the trees. There wasn’t a fence to block the exit, and I lost the shape somewhere in the darkness, but I’m not going to chase it down to a territory that I don’t feel confident in winning.
As I turn, a shape in the curtains moves, and my heart lunges against my ribs. It’s the same hunched back shape that I saw in the shadows, but it had somehow gotten up in Holly’s room quicker than I thought it was possible.
I didn’t even hear anything move behind me and it was only a brief moment that I saw the shadow disappear. Whatever the hell it is, I have to get up there.
I hope that my stomping on the stairs deter the perpetrator to leave. I want to do everything I can to warn Holly and get her to wake up. If she’s awake, she has a better chance of fighting whoever is there.
I have a sickening feeling that it’s The Butcher; it’s the only thing that makes sense in these seemingly unconnected events.
I shout her name; that way Kian can hear and wake Holly up too. Bursting through the door of her apartment, I sprint to her bedroom where it’s open for the yellow light to spill into the black hallway.
Another set of boots flies up to the stairs of the apartment as I search the room for the assailant, but no one is there, and the closet door is still closed.
I swing it open and fall back when something heavy and growling attacks me. I shield the maw of a dog with my forearm. Its teeth rip through my skin and dig into my muscles as pain burst through my arm.
Grasping the dog by the neck, choking it enough to get the teeth to recede back into the mouth. I keep my hold there as the canine thrashes violently, muddy nails clawing on the floor to get away from me, but my grip is too strong for it to escape.
The bleeding on wound starts to drip on my pants as I maintain a makeshift muzzle on the dog’s mouth.
“Where’s Holly?” Kian demands from behind me.
I open the closet door wider, and the space where I left her is empty; the boxes are hazardously tipped over.
“Fuck, she’s gone!” I clench the dog's mouth shut as I make a stand, holding the thrashing dog in my hand.
I turn to look at Kian. His eyes are of a wild animal that’s too wounded up to speak with logic. His eyes dart across the room where the window is open, the curtain blows with the wind, and I know I did not open it.
Kian is fast for someone with a body mass equating to a bodybuilder. He’s jumping out of the second-story window effortlessly, and I don’t waste time either. I toss the rabid dog into the closet and slam it shut; the barking and scratching of the door is the last thing I hear when I rush out the bedroom door.
The stairs take me to the front door where I see Kian scanning the street with people coming out. The dogs continue to bark as sirens screech from a distance and the signature color of police cars coming down the block.
Kian and I are not worried about that. We are searching for Holly in the dark with too many people in the way.
Just as we’re about to split up, he stands absolutely rigid, and I tear my gaze from the street to the thing he’s looking at.
It’s a van, and it would be a normal sight if I had actually recognized it from the neighborhood. I have made it my objective to research every single occupant in the block when the prospect of Holly being a victim became too apparent.
No one has a van.
The fact becomes more sinister when the van is parked right in front of the apartment. Rustic light blue under the high street light, small window curtains are drawn and unmoving as the voices from the residents turn into ambient noise.
Kian prowls up to the back of the van, a predatory trait that I also have as I creep up to the other side of the van. I press my back to the side of the van, making sure the side mirror doesn’t catch my reflection as I stealthy jump in front of the passenger side.
The seat and the driver side are empty, but I hear the back door being yanked open and I dart back to where Kian is. I sling a hand into the other door handle and yank it open, and I’m momentarily paralyzed at the scene.
Holly is laying in the disgustingly dirty van; the smoothness of her thighs exposed to the air as the medical-grade scalpel gleams under the street light that illuminates the dark van.
I follow the hand that’s holding the weapon to the woman I saw from the coffee shop. The cashier has her eyes widened at the interference, and Kian strikes with a yank of her arm that holds the sharp instrument; his muscles ripple maniacally and dislocate her shoulder when he wrenches back.
She falls down to the ground, and his fists are flying towards her face with sickening crunches that shatter her bones.
I take her place and pick Holly up, she’s knocked out cold, and her breathing suggests she is too deep in her sleep.
Pieces of information start to puzzle together, fitting in the missing pieces that didn’t make sense to me, and now I somewhat have a bigger picture.
The drink that she had when I wasn’t in my office must consist of a drug that is slow in effect because she didn’t get knocked out right away and the acidic scent has to be from the hibiscus flower in the drink to disguise the taste of the drug.
Drugs don’t tend to have a pleasant taste, and the only way to make sure Holly drinks it is to hide it with the taste of bitter coffee.
I find a patch of oily substance on her wrist, and I hold it up to examine the content and the scent of hibiscus oil hits my nose.
The whole van smells like it, and it’s horrendous; it’s saturated and in a concentrated dosage that makes me wince at the throbbing on my temple.
Hearing the crushing blows of Kian’s fist smashing the ribcage of the woman, I turn and watch the muscles on his back reel tight before another bone breaks under his savage punch.
I don’t stop him, and I have no intention of even thinking about it; I want that woman dead and suffer at the hands of a professional killer.
Then I noticed her legs.
Her shorts can’t hide the disfiguration of her skin. It’s similar to burn scars that extend down to both of her legs. The length of her leg isn’t able to hold its shape any longer and return to the deformed buckle that gives me a flashback of the figure that ran through Holly’s neighbor’s backyard.
What I thought was a canine on two hind legs is actually her, and she is able to go on her day by forcing her legs to be straight.
What the fuck is this freak show?
“Police!” flashlights aim into the van and at Kian whose fist isn’t stopping.
“Stop right now! Get away from her!” one of the police shouts, but I can’t see who said it with all the blinding white light in my face.
It takes three officers to take Kian away from the limp figure on the ground. It’s hard to tell if she’s alive or not.
Kian stops struggling, gauging the scene through his black eyes as he meets mine when he turns his head. Cops point guns at him and cuff his wrist behind his back as he lays on the ground, too calm and too calculating to be for someone under arrest.
He should be calm; I have his back. Kian knows this, and he knows I will come for him after I take care of Holly.
Chapter Nine
Kian
My reflection returns the dead gaze that I set on the double-sided mirror.
Fifteen minutes tick by, no one comes in, but the camera at the corner of the interrogation is red. The indication of myself being reported does not bother me; their tactics for information extraction are laughable.
They have dealt with criminals on the streets, and I’m willing to bet that the worst criminals they have come across are the local mobsters. This isn’t crime shows for entertainment. Assassins have a lot more leeway in getting out of prison time much easier than the average lowlifes.
I have not left any evidence at all the scenes of assassination. They don’t know my real identity, and they have nothing connecting me to Capitol crimes. The most they have on me is aggravated assault, a felony that I can beat without breaking a sweat.
Thirty minutes pass, and without a clock in the room, I might be a couple of seconds off. I’m good with time. It’s a skill that I acquired when counting down the clock on a sniper training. I do have to practice constantly to not get weaken. Muscle memories are a fickle thing with skillsets getting rusty over time.
