Ruin Box Set (2 page)

A loud
thonk
hit the metal roof followed by a fast
thonk thonk thonk thonk
across it
.
They both jerked to the window to see a form drop with one last
thonk
onto the small metal roof next to the opened window.

Like a freaky apparition, a man out of nowhere stood there, staring at
her.
At that point, Isadore’s brain was back to malfunctioning, caught up on the deep green eyes. They were so oddly bright in the dark. She noticed as he climbed through the window, he wore black dress pants but they took second place to his naked torso covered in tattoos. She stared transfixed at the ancient onyx colored symbols crowding the tanned skin, shiny with sweat. The tattoos extended up the right side of his face and disappeared into his hair. Her attention shifted to the heave of his massive chest and the fact that he now stood only a few feet from her bed. Who the hell was he? There were
no
men around the swamp
that
well-muscled. Zero. This man did not have a body of a hard worker, he was built like a battle-hardened warrior from the pages of ancient Greece. And he stood right there. In her room. And he even looked like he’d stepped from the battlefield, wavy dark hair dripping wet, ridiculous handsome face harshened with something that made her crawl as far back onto the bed as she could.  

Jared had also slowly backed up. “This your boyfriend?” he muttered, fear and stupidity cracking his voice.

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She could only stare into the bright green eyes.

“I’ve been listening,” the strange man said to her. His voice was low but deep and clear, not angry as she’d expect.

“You a pervert?” Jared still backed up. “You always walk around the woods spying on women?” 

The strange look in the man’s eyes held Isadore captive. So many emotions all at once. Curiosity… rage…. Okay, only two,  but a lot of those two.

“I’ve been listening,” he repeated. Those eyes bore into hers still, his voice hissing with a low snarl that showed near flawless teeth. He looked at Jared and slowly angled his head as though trying to figure out what he was doing there. Or figure out what he was.

The air in the room became hot like it was on fire and Isadore gasped with it. Then she felt ice cold wind, slashing intermittently within it. The man pointed at Jared. “
You
lied.”

Chapter Two

Ruin stared at the human named Jared, not understanding why the heat of the sun burned through him alongside the breath of ice, roaring in his ears. He quickly searched through the data he’d learned in the last two days to explain it, but found nothing to match this need moving him closer to the man. His body told him to take the human’s his head off, no, the heat said it. And the cold… the cold seemed to say no, that wasn’t quite right.

The longer Ruin stared at the horror and skittering of the human, the hotter the heat became. He looked at the woman next. She had taught him a lot in the last few days. The look in her eyes held the answer. If only he could see past the fear in them. He felt the snarl before it purred its way up his throat through clenched teeth as the power to rip or crush
something
became stronger. But so did the ice cold warning that carried that simple
don’t
.

Fury and rage, and that other thing boiled inside him until he could barely breathe. Ruin looked at the man, finally. “Leave!”

Blood red fire exploded through the room with his command, followed immediately by white ice that harnessed the flames with spidery fingers, turning the sure death into a hiss of steam.

Before the air cleared, the human was down the ladder and running out the door. Ruin gazed at the woman named Isadore, looking to her for answers of what had just happened to him. The fear in her eyes slowly ebbed away enough for him to see questions. Questions like he had. She was like him in many ways, he realized. Was that why he felt the constant need to watch her?

The sight of blood on the bed drew his gaze to it and he involuntary went to her. He felt that anger from earlier stirring again. He was suddenly acutely aware of two things happening inside him. One part of him wanted to open the wound on her leg that produced the blood and let it pour until the wretched body was extinguished. The other part of him wanted to kill what caused it.

It all confused him and he remembered the words that he needed to say to her. “Help me.”

Waiting, he studied the woman’s eyes that matched the sky that peeked through the trees during the hottest part of the day. The sizzling in his brain happened again. He liked the feeling because he always understood things more after. He waited for the heat to do its thing, watching the movement of life at her neck without looking directly at it. The sparks raced around in his head from one thing to the next, almost too fast for him to follow as he stared deeply into her gaze.

He took an abrupt step back at finally getting what he saw. There was no name for it, only that it made the heat inside him swirl hot with the need to crush it. A deep growl began to vibrate in his throat and the look she had was immediately replaced with fear, making the heat worse.

He’d never had the need to take her head off, but he did now. And he was sure he would have, if the shards of ice didn’t war in his body, little knives of
don’t.
Ruin hurried to the window when that power expanded with need to release. It was somehow worse than it had been with that Jared human. The need to understand why, or not knowing why, wasn’t helping.

He was
weak,
that was the word, he was sure. And he didn’t like that. Didn’t like wasn’t the right words. There was another word more fitting, he could feel it, he just couldn’t name it because he didn’t
know
it.

He gave one furious glance back at the woman before jumping for the tree limb over the roof. She was the answer. He didn’t know how or why, he just knew she was. As he sought a place nearby to wait till morning, he contemplated that last look in her eyes. It had told him other things about her. It said she’d give him all the answers he needed. And that she’d give him whatever he wanted. He didn’t understand that part, but it gave him a good feeling.

****

Isadore eyed the swamp with caution as she made her way to her crawfish traps in her faithful canoe, riddled with patches, mostly made out of the miracle working chewing gum. She wasn’t looking for the alligator, but Tarzan. That’s what she’d nicknamed him until she had a name. And she would definitely be getting a name. “Help me.” She muttered the words he’d spoken. “How am I supposed to do that if you don’t ever come back?”

Giddy excitement tickled her stomach and she focused
not
on the man’s body or looks but on the other amazing things she should be focused on. Like…damn those eyes, she’d never seen any green eyes like that before. But really what required her scientific attention was what he’d
done
with the air in the room and how he’d done it. She pulled out her sticky note pad from the front pocket of her overalls and bit off the cap of her blue sharpie. “Felt like a hundred and twenty degrees,” she wrote on the pad. Holding the sharpie between her teeth, she tore off the note, folded it and put it in her front pocket then began drawing some of the symbols she’d remembered seeing. “I know those symbols. At least a few of them.”

She wiped the drool from her Sharpee and put the cap back on and returned her scientific tools to her large apron sized pocked gaping open at the top of her coveralls, getting serious with the oars until she reached her first trap location. She pulled it up, and the bait-war saga took the stage of her mind, front and center. “Fuckers,” she muttered. With a sigh, she looked around, feeling like the bastards who were robbing the bait out of her traps were hugging a tree nearby, whacking their legs and howling in silent laughter. She was the butt of the joke in town. Stupid city-girl trying to be a country girl. She’d never make it, they said, but ohhhh, look who
was
making it. Let them cram that in their pipes and smoke it.

“That’s okay,” she said loudly, hoping somebody
was
there to hear. “I’m just going to put up city cameras to take pictures of whoever is
stealing
my bait and then they are going to
jail!
” Stupid Cajun coonasses. She tossed the empty trap back into the water and yelled, “I was raised in these swamps! Did you forget that?” She snatched up her oar and jabbed it into the water. “I have a right to be here!” She made her way to the next trap, thinking it was time to relocate them again. “Buncha dumbfucks,” she muttered. “Maybe I will do the camera thing. I could put some fake ones, they’d never know the difference. Could probably put up one of them View-Master 3-D toys and the idiots would think it was a sophisticated modern-day-devil-contraption.”

She aimed her canoe for the next trap and stopped to find the same moral felony as the previous. There was no point in checking any further, they’d robbed them all. A good thing she had money or they’d have robbed her back to the city. It had become a matter of principal. And maybe stubborn challenge, but these effers weren’t going to win. Letting them win was wrong. Not stopping them was wrong. She rowed her boat to Mr. Thibodeaux’s just for a quick hi and to check on him.

Dragging her canoe on land, she made her way along the skinny grass trail to the old man’s back door. “Mr. Thibodeaux?” She knocked loudly on the old screen door. “It’s Isadore, you up?” She could hear the sound of frying and by the smell of it, he had the day’s vittles on. Which could be any number of innards from any number of animals, all of which Isadore had no taste for. Anything that operated as a filter in any capacity in nature, was not only dirty, it was dirty tasting to her. 

“Izzy? Come on in chile, the door open.”

She opened the flimsy door, mindful that it only hung by a top hinge. “Just stopping to say hi,” she called out, pulling the door shut so that it rested in the jamb. She passed through the closet sized room just before the kitchen and focused on the smell of fresh brewed coffee in the tiny kitchen. She pulled out the metal chair she’d given him. “Remind me to pick up that screen when I go into town tomorrow for that back door. One of these days I’ll find you carried away by the mosquitos.”

Mr. Thibodeaux turned with a coffee cup and loud laughing, shuffling his way to the table. “Dem skeeters don’t botha me, they can’t poke no holes in dis here ole hide. You comin’ from yah
traps?
” His gnarly hand trembled as he carefully set the cup down and then himself before leveling those gray eyes on her, lit up with the promise of mischievous gossip.

“You know it.” She always made him work for it and today was no different. She took the single spoon from the cream and sugar tray, another gift she’d given him—but for
her
when she came—since he sucked at accepting gifts.

“Well?” he cried. “Dem sonsabitches stealin’ from ya still?”

She nodded slowly, stirring her cup. “Yep. They are.” She sipped her coffee, noticing he’d finally put up the fly tape she’d bought him. Not a one damn fly on it.

“Well, I’ll be!” His old body jerked dramatically. “What you gone do, Izzy? Mebbee you could train dat alligator to hep you?” He cackled and rocked in his seat, delighted with his idea.

She nodded and shrugged, sipping her coffee. “Very funny, you know I don’t like alligators.”

“Meh why not, sha? You
live
in da swamp, das dare hometown! You gots to luv em!”

“No I don’t. I never read I had to love them alligators to live in the swamp. I may like to hunt one and et him up though.”

Mr. Thibodeaux got a kick out of that. “You gone hunt you an
alligator
? Now dat would be fun to watch fuh show! You hawngry?”

“No, I just wanted to say hi and ask if you’d heard of any newcomers in our neck of the woods.”

“Newcomer?” His eyes lit up again as he leaned back, regarding her. “Meh no.” He leaned in close then. “Why, you have a visitor?”

“Oh,” she waved a dismissive hand, “No, no, I just… wondered.” More coffee stirring now. “So, we expecting a hurricane this year?”

“Dis might be dah year, fuh sho,” he caressed his elbow, “I feel it in my ole bones.”

She nodded, hoping he was both right and not. “Are you ready? You said you’d come stay with me if we had one.” At seeing his absent expression, she pointed at him. “You promised Mr. Thibodeaux, I told you I was scared.”

He made a pained expression. “Meh… I can’t really leave mah house like dat.”

“Your house isn’t going anywhere!” she cried, acting desperate. Problem was, she was sure his house
was
going somewhere if a hurricane hit. Her dad had made their house to withstand storms and it had. “The last hurricane you went through
nearly kilt
you, those were
your
words, mister!” she aimed an accusing finger at him.

“Awww,” he pawed the air with his old hand before smiling at her with his chin nearly touching his nose. “Ima be alright chile.”

She sighed and shook her head then got up from the table. “Oh I’m sure you will because you’re staying with me. You said you would. You can’t go back on your word,” she reminded him.

“Lemme walk you out, chile.” She nearly protested but the old man loved company so she waited the ten seconds it took him to complete the simple task. “You still comin tomorrow to get me my stuff?”

“As scheduled,” she saluted, walking to the back door. 

“Aaaaaas schedule,” he said, following.

She opened the rickety screen door carefully, holding it open for Mr. Thibodeaux. “You’re riding with me this time?”

He held on to the jamb, navigating the treacherous two steps she needed to fix next. “Shoooo, you know I get sea sick on dat lil crazy boat.” Laughter laced his every word then cackled out after.

“We can go in the truck, you said you would.”

“I will, I will, chile. Soon.”

“Soon.” She made her way down the small path to her canoe, pretending to let Mr. Thibodeaux guide her steps as she held his forearm. “You’ve been saying that for three years.” She scoped the area for any out of the ordinary movements resembling Tarzan.

“Meh, it still early, sha. I gots time, me.”

She laughed. “You got time? You don’t even have your time teller on.”

His old gray eyes widened. “Ohhhh, meh das right, I gots to—”

“I know, I know,” she said, “it’s on my list. A battery for Mr. Thibodeaux’s time teller.”

“Keee-yaw, you smart wit dem lisses you make.”

Carefully climbing in the boat, she chuckled. “I am the list maker.”

He gave one of his best cackles and lit up gazes. “Dah
Lisssss
Makah.” He wagged his finger, nodding his head. “Now das some fancy stuff.”

She looked around and pulled out her sticky pad and bit off her blue sharpie cap. “Add screen to Mr. Thibodeaux’s list,” she mumbled around the cap in her mouth, scrawling quickly then ripping the note off. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.” She folded it and put it in her pocket and angled a squinted gaze at him.

“Okay sha, be careful, now.”

She tossed a wave up then stabbed the oar into the mud, pushing off, looking out of habit for that alligator. Although, it was the land that her eyes kept roaming over. And the trees. For Tarzan.

Back at the house, docking the canoe proved to be vexing, what with the whole trying to scope the area without actually appearing to be looking. It didn’t help that she
had
to fulfill her obsessive canoe tying ritual. Rear had to face north, paddles together, spanning both seats, rope knotted exactly right or there would be no damn sleeping at night. The canoe tying task done, she covertly reapplied her hair clamp, using the opportunity to scope the area. What was wrong with looking? That was a normal thing for a woman to do living alone in a swamp.