Death's Ink Black Shadow (29 page)

It took a special kind of monster to mutilate the old. Much more challenging than building beautiful houses.

He gripped his gun a little tighter and slid into the soft illumination.

It took him an inordinately long span of seconds to work out what he was seeing.

When he did, he felt the pills and alcohol roil in his belly, but he swallowed them down.

Anatoly was in a chair. Tied to it. He’d been beaten. He was dead, a clean bullet hole in his forehead and not so neat splatter of blood and brain matter on the bed behind him.

But it wasn’t Anatoly that made Nikolas sway with incredulity, hesitate, and freeze for the first time in his life.

It was Ben.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Before Nikolas could speak—if he could have summoned one coherent word to say—Ben propelled him back against the wall and relieved him of his gun. Ben was dressed, as he was, all in black. His eyes were the only colour Nikolas could see, wide, green—and cold. They weren’t their habitual warm green of cut grass on a summer’s day. The hard depth of a southern ocean stared back at him.

Ben laid both weapons onto the chest of drawers carefully, then before Nikolas could summon his senses, Ben slapped him.

Reeling from the blow, he was then pulled into a furious, almost demented embrace, and Ben croaked, “No more killing, Nik. Not for you.”

Nikolas was held off for a moment; he thought he was about to be hit again, but he was dragged into an even fiercer hug. He wanted to mention his back, but thought it might not be a good moment.

Ben suddenly ground their mouths together, preventing speech anyway.

When he’d kissed him until there was no breath left between them, Ben panted savagely in his ear, “You are
not
alone, Nikolas.
Never
. I’m right here with you, if this is how it has to be. I will kill the whole fucking world for you, if that is what you need.” Ben shook him. “Do you understand me?”

Nikolas nodded. It was beyond him to do more.

Only when he appeared satisfied with Nikolas’s gesture of compliance did Ben release him, but then he seized his arm and dragged him toward the door, taking both guns himself and stowing them in the back of his waistband.

They left by the front door.

It had taken less than twenty minutes.

Nikolas felt more had changed between them in that fraction of an hour than in the whole decade they’d known each other.

§ § §

Ben refused to answer any questions as they made their way back to where Nikolas had left the car. He kept an unnecessary hold on Nikolas’s upper arm—Nikolas wasn’t sure whether Ben thought he needed assistance or restraint—then Ben pushed him toward the vehicle. “Can you drive?”

“Since I was eight.”

Ben ignored him and glanced around. “Go straight home. I need to retrieve my bike.”

Nikolas nodded again. His neck was getting stiff from all the agreeing he’d been doing recently. It saved him from having to speak though. Ben didn’t seem to like his silence, however. He was seized again, both upper arms in a painfully strong grip and then he was shaken. “I mean it. Straight home.”

Nikolas didn’t need to repeat his useful mime. The shaking was doing it for him.

He stood bemused as Ben Rider-Mikkelsen effortlessly vaulted a six-foot wall and disappeared into the darkness of the park behind them.

§ § §

Nikolas had many questions.

When they were home, at the kitchen table, tea inevitably between them, he asked the first and most important. “What did he tell you?”

Ben looked up from his cup, and Nikolas watched him lie. “Nothing.” It was inconceivable; Ben never lied to him, but what truly astonished Nikolas was that Ben
knew
he understood it was a lie. He didn’t even bother to make it convincing. He even gave Nikolas a tiny challenging flick of his eyebrow as if to tempt him to call him on it and added, “Nothing you need to know.” He was announcing…solidarity. They were as one in this as they were as one in everything, apparently.

Nikolas had a feeling that Stefan and Anatoly would never be mentioned between them again.

Quite what they were going to talk about was a mystery to him.

He was living with a stranger.

Everything he’d thought lately about Ben was a distortion. He’d seen only the easy-going, happy to love and be loved, slightly vain, very spoilt boyfriend he’d created.

Whereas all this time, Ben had been exactly what he’d always been. What he’d been when Nikolas had first seen him in an interrogation room, smirking as his torturers had beaten him, pissed on him, pretended to fuck him. He’d laughed, told bad jokes and spat in their faces when they’d released him.

He’d seen someone who was his equal. His match. His
twin
.

Nikolas had seen Ben as the missing half of himself.

With Ben, he was…whole.

Everything now shifted, tilted, realigned perfectly. He began to smile.

Ben was studying him closely, a slight grin just ghosting across his face.

Ben apparently knew exactly what he was thinking.

§ § §

Nikolas lived in a dream state for the next two weeks, anaesthetised, literally, by pills supplied by Andrea Gillian—more legal and useful than those Peyton Garic had given him—and metaphorically on bemusement and confusion.

He had, according to Andrea Gillian upon her return, suffered a separated shoulder due to entirely ripping all the ligaments that held it together. If he’d not been a swimmer, he would have done a great deal more permanent damage. As it was, he couldn’t lift his arm; rotating it at all was agonising. He couldn’t get in or out of bed without assistance. He couldn’t shower or shave. He’d had bullet wounds less painful than this injury. He’d been chained in a hunting shed and frozen near to death and had recovered more quickly. He took the pills and let them wash him away on a sea of foggy numbness.

Two weeks later, Ben told him they were going to Devon.

The words startled him more than they should, but they’d not spoken much since the odd reunion over the body of the man Ben had brutalised and murdered. The more Nikolas had thought on Anatoly’s death, as he’d lain in bed feeling sorry for himself, the more he’d seen in his mind’s eye the evidence of extreme torture, which he hadn’t noticed at the time—given the circumstances.

Whether this was real or a product of his overactive imagination and knowledge of this arcane skill he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t ask either. Ben had been absent a great deal during the two weeks, there to help him with the physical things he couldn’t manage, but very busy, apparently. He’d not told him where he’d been or what he was occupied with, and Nikolas sensed Ben wouldn’t tell him about Anatoly either. Ben seemed to be letting him know only what he needed to hear. He was happy, for once, to let this be. He wondered if an ordinary relationship would have led to sympathetic questions about Stefan. Hugs, kisses, healing sex…He’d got a slap, crushed ribs and lies.

He preferred their kind of love.

So now, “Get up. We’re going to Devon,” alarmed him.

He turned in the bed, wincing at the pain. How could it
still
hurt so much? He wondered briefly if Andrea Gillian had lied to him—if Ben had told her to. That in fact he’d done a great deal more damage to his back pulling Ben and the old dog out of the mud than they’d admitted to him. He wouldn’t put this past Ben now. He wouldn’t put anything past Ben.

“Why?”

“Because.”

When he got downstairs, limping, leaning on the banister, Ben took one look at him, shook his head, and demanded, “Go change. You look like shit.”

Nikolas considered his old jeans and T-shirt and meekly returned upstairs.

Shaved, hair styled, dressed in his favourite bespoke suit and hand-stitched linen shirt, he did feel more himself, despite the hour and a half it had taken him to achieve this level of perfection. He took a deep breath and stretched. Then regretted this and doubled over with a small, uncharacteristic whimper. “Fucking hell!”

He felt a hand on his arm. Restraint? Help? He
still
couldn’t decide.

Ben was considering them both in the full-length mirror.

Nikolas joined him in the scrutiny.

No one would have taken them for twins, that was for sure. Certainly when they were indulging in their favourite activity—not that they’d been doing that for many days as he’d been unable to even turn over to sleep let alone to be fucked—they wouldn’t appear to be two halves of the same person. But they were. He knew this now. He snorted faintly at the thought of them in bed…
twins
…and knew a similar thought had ghosted through Ben’s mind. Ben appeared more able to repress his irreverent side, and nothing of his expression gave him away. Nikolas knew though.

He stared at Ben’s reflection. Thirty-five years old two months ago.
He
had turned forty-seven this year, but for a moment it appeared to Nikolas as if he were the younger of the two. But then would he not always now see his face in the mirror as Stefan’s? That last moment, when he’d drawn his son to him and kissed into his blond, Mikkelsen hair, Stefan had thought his father was giving him a loving embrace. He’d not told Ben this. Would never tell Ben. But whatever lies or truths Anatoly had told Stefan, the boy had wanted his father to love him, and when Nikolas had seized him and hugged him, he’d thought he was finally being offered the love he craved.

Not telling Ben this wasn’t a lie to keep him from the shit of his life. Ben was there, swimming alongside him—always had been, apparently. Nikolas needed Ben to swim free, therefore, unencumbered by additional burdens.

One day, he might pull them both from this darkness.

Ben seemed pleased with how they looked for some reason. He handed Nikolas his beautiful watch, then strapped it on for him.

“Okay, you’re good to go.”

Nikolas, in his drugged, confused state, wondered for a moment if he’d died and was being taken to his own funeral. Then he remembered he’d died many years ago.

Ben narrowed his eyes, knowingly. “Pain meds don’t mix with coke.”

Nikolas’s brows rose, but he didn’t deny it. He’d been fuelled on more than righteous fury, alcohol, and pain meds when he’d invaded Anatoly’s house as well. He straightened and didn’t let his wince show. “I need to tell Peyton we’re leaving.”

“Peyton’s gone.”

Nikolas froze. He felt as if he’d been told a life raft had been stolen. He felt sick. Ben grabbed his arm again and began to steer him out of the door. “Not for good.”

Nikolas began to ask, “Where is—?”

“Shut up.”

Nikolas didn’t ask again.

He slept most of the drive to Devon. He’d forgotten his dislocated ankle, on the more immediate pain from his back and shoulder, but that had been ripped apart by the leather strap as well. Stefan’s body had apparently survived the strain intact, his hadn’t. Perhaps the dead always survived better than the living.

Lying in bed for two weeks, he’d not really noticed the ankle. Walking to the car, even with Ben’s assistance, he did. He wondered idly how he’d managed to help carry Radulf’s hundred pound plus bulk across the moors to the house. He made a mental note to ask the dog. No one else was telling him anything.

Nikolas woke to an elbow in his ribs just as they passed Exeter. It was late morning and hot, an unexpected Indian summer in October that had passed him by as he’d lain in the bed, doped and depressed.

He ran a hand through his hair, his fringe annoying him as it always did. Stefan’s hair had been more like Nika’s. Odd, when you thought about it.

They passed through the old gateposts.

The last time they’d come through them they’d been racing to a fire. He’d thought they’d all be dead: Emmy, Babushka, Miles, Enid. Dead because of him, his insistence that Ben live a life outside his shadows, out of the sewer. Well, now he was in it with him. At least he’d achieved that.

Nikolas frowned as they drove along the ridgeline. The valley where the house stood was bathed in sunshine, the autumn colours of the trees intense, adding mellow warmth to the view.

“Cars.”

Ben grunted at Nikolas’s coherent comment.

Nikolas would have turned around to assess the large number of vehicles in front of their house, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t turn anything, not even his neck. He’d hurt that too, apparently. Who knew when? When he’d snapped Stefan’s maybe.

Ben pulled up behind all the other cars and climbed out. He came around to open Nikolas’s door, like a chauffeur. Best looking chauffeur in the world. Nikolas snorted at his own joke, but decided not to remind Ben of the illegal topping up he’d been doing to his drugs. He eased to standing and was about to ask about the vehicles once more when he saw Emilia and her grandmother coming out of the house.

Suddenly, it seemed as if there were people everywhere, all in bright apparel and making noise—laughing and kissing him. Not his funeral then.

But it was a party of some kind.

He couldn’t work it out.

He searched for Ben with his eyes and found him.

Ben was watching him.

Nikolas kept his gaze for a moment then limped a little way away to the cover of one of the huge rhododendron bushes.

Ben followed.

Ben wrapped his arms around him, despite there being so many people still milling around. Nikolas was beginning to make sense of the sea of faces. The moron, Tim, Kate’s mother and father. He frowned. Ingrid Peterson…? A young man he recognised with a young woman and a baby…?

“We can have both, Nik.” Nikolas switched his focus back to Ben in his arms.

“Huh?”

Ben smiled. It was the first genuine one for a long time, and it reached his eyes, lit them up, reached beyond the darkness and just took it away. “You were right. About everything. But you’re wrong, too. About everything. This is just as real. Do you recognise everyone?”

Nikolas opened his mouth to say no, but then he did recognise the young man. “Samuel? Samuel Terry?”

Ben laughed. “And his new wife and baby.”

“And that’s…”