Vengeance Bound (24 page)

I’m too tired to do my makeup or really even care, and once I finish cleaning up the biohazard, I collapse on the couch. I don’t even have the strength to turn on the TV.

I’m still surprised that They tried to take me over. I’ve kept my end of the bargain. So why did They change the script at Halsey’s? Why strike now? Surely my weak objections weren’t enough to make Them move against me, were they?

After so many years of being powerless, I can’t believe a single “no” could send Them into panic mode. But it’s not like it matters. I can still feel Them squatting in the back of my mind, unwelcome guests. Even after a failed attempt to take over my body, They still haven’t left. I don’t think They can.

Despair settles over me like a heavy blanket. I have nothing to live for. I can’t spend the rest of my life helping Them kill any man who crosses Their path, and I can’t get rid of Them. I’ve been coasting along for so long that I never thought about what I would do if something like this happened. I really thought They needed me. Knowing that They don’t makes me feel like the past five years have been a complete lie.

So what am I going to do about it?

Odie jumps into my lap with a plaintive yowl, startling me from my doze. The front door opens and closes, and I twist around to see Niko. A bag dangles from his hand, and his hair is wet. I sit up, and the scent of him curls around me seductively. He smells like the ocean and fried chicken, and I don’t know whether to bite him or kiss him.

Niko sees my expression, and a slow, knowing smile spreads across his face. I blush at being so transparent. He doesn’t seem to notice. “I got a whiff of myself on the way to get food, so I swung by my house and took a shower.”

I can’t help but lick my lips. “I don’t know what smells better, you or the chicken.”

He moves toward where I sit on the couch, setting the bag on the coffee table before sitting down and snuggling in close. His lips touch mine, and I forget about eating as my fingers graze the stubble left behind on his cheeks. There is something strangely addicting about Niko, a mixture of softness and roughness that blends together perfectly. I want to sink into his arms, to meld myself into him like a second skin, my body against his.

I would, too, if my stomach weren’t growling like the engine of a sports car.

Niko pulls away with a laugh. “Let’s eat before you waste away to nothing.”

We dig into the food, laughing and talking about the reality TV show Niko turns on. I’m polishing off my fourth piece of chicken when Niko sits back with a sigh, muting the television. My eyes meet his, and I stop eating. “What?”

“I hate to miss the end of this”—he gestures toward the TV, sarcasm dripping off every word—“but I want to hear your story. How you ended up . . . possessed.”

The memory of my promise saps my appetite, and I set down the mostly naked chicken leg after tearing off the last few pieces of meat and giving them to Odie. I wipe my greasy fingers on a napkin, staring at the cheap paper. “It’s not a very interesting story,” I say, avoiding his question.

Niko sits up and takes my hands in his. I stare at the strength in his long fingers, at the way his hands are so much larger than mine. He raises my hands to his mouth and kisses the backs of my knuckles. My stomach lurches, but They are still suspiciously silent, and the lack of objection lets me enjoy how endearing the simple act is. My reluctance melts away. I can trust Niko.

I clear my throat. “I grew up not too far from here, outside of Philly in West Chester. My mom worked for a medical firm, testing experimental vaccines. My dad was a trust fund kid. My grandparents were loaded, and Dad was a bit of a Renaissance man. He taught archeology at a nearby college, not for the money but just for something to do.”

Every morning he would get up and sing songs from musicals. He would chase me around the house belting out tunes like “Oklahoma!” or “If I Were a Rich Man” while I got dressed for school. Mom would always scold him for making me late, but she would never frown at him. I think she loved his singing as much as I did.

The happy memory makes me ache for my parents.

Niko says nothing, just looks at me with those deep ocean eyes, and I continue. “Everything sort of fell apart when I was twelve, almost thirteen.” I swallow, searching for the words to tell him what happened. I open my mouth, but all I can do is listen to my heart pounding in my ears.

Hi, sweetheart. Do you need a ride?

Niko’s hands tighten around mine, and the contact breaks through the spell. His lips thin as he studies me. “What happened?”

I take a deep breath. “I was kidnapped. On the way home from school, my friend Steph and I had a fight. She wanted to go to a friend’s house, and I wanted to go home. We split up, and a block later someone pulled me into a car. It was four months before I saw my family again.”

Horror transforms Niko’s face, and I forge ahead before he can say anything. “I don’t remember much of it. The psychologists I went to after I came back said I blocked out most of it. I guess it’s a pretty common thing. The truth is, They took the memories away from me when I called for Their help. For the Furies’ help.” I remember when I first felt them. I lay on the floor of the basement where he kept me, cold and hungry and hurting. I could hear him moving around upstairs, heavy footsteps that echoed throughout the dark.
Please, someone find me,
I prayed, and not for the first time. But this time I wasn’t praying out of fear as much as rage. I was angry that I was so powerless. It wasn’t fair.

Please, anyone. I’ll do anything to hurt him like he hurt me.

From out of the darkness a glimmer of awareness prickled my mind. I could feel Their divine anger, Their rage. It warmed me in the cold dark of my prison.
Anything?
They asked.

I thought I was going crazy, that my mind had finally snapped. What did it matter? I knew Roland Thomas would kill me anyway. “Oh, yes,” I sobbed in answer to Their question, hope a painful thing after all I’d been through. “I will do anything.”

At the time I didn’t know what I was getting into, but desperation robbed me of any real choice. I could live on Their terms, or die, another of Roland Thomas’s victims.

“Why you?” Niko asks. He’s watching me with a mixture of fascination and pain, and I place a kiss in his palm. His fingers twine with mine, and I search for the words to answer his question. There’s nothing to do but answer him truthfully.

“I didn’t know at first, but over the past few years I’ve figured out why. I had an older cousin, and we were at a barbecue when I jumped into the nearby lake. I was really little, not even in school yet. She screamed, and raced after me, my dad and uncle right behind her. She jumped into the water and dove under, but my dad found me first, and gave me CPR. I was okay, and it took a while for everyone to realize that Melissa never surfaced. By the time they found her, she was gone. From the stories I heard, they think she got disoriented under the water and couldn’t make it back to the surface. It was a quarry lake, and really deep.”

Niko shakes his head. “I don’t get it. So what?”

“I killed my cousin, Niko.”

“That’s stupid. You were a little kid.”

“Maybe, but I was still responsible for her death. That stain on my soul is what the Furies needed to enter me.”

He nods very slowly, and sinks farther into the cushions of the couch. “So how did you get away from the guy who had you?”

I meet Niko’s steady gaze. “The first thing I did once They joined me was kill him. I got to him before he could get to me.” The basement door gave way like paper when I slammed my shoulder into it. Later the police would wonder out loud to my parents how a half-starved girl suffering from dehydration and a badly healed broken left arm could have knocked the door down, let alone done the damage that I had to Roland Thomas. I didn’t know either. I’m lucky that I don’t remember. There was so much blood, I had nightmares about it for months.

“The police found his DNA attached to ten other cases. I wasn’t the first girl he’d grabbed, and the police actually found a couple of other bodies in the backyard of the house.” My parents discussed the case in agonized whispers when they thought I wasn’t listening, the same way they’d discussed me.

It’s something I try not to think about.

“I was back home for less than a week before my parents sent me to a psychologist to help me deal with the trauma. The Furies were in my head but mostly quiet. A whisper every now and then, but nothing I couldn’t ignore. The first couple of doctors weren’t so bad, mostly because they were more interested in getting paid than fixing me. But then . . .” Tears overflow my eyes at the memory, and I dash them away. “They sent me to a new doctor, and he had me committed.”

I open my mouth to continue the story, to tell Niko the rest, but a sob tears out of me instead. I cover my face in shame and surprise, and Niko wraps his arms around me. He holds me while I cry. The pain of the memory is as sharp as it was on the day my parents told me.

After a couple of minutes of blubbering, I take a deep breath and calm down enough to finish my story. The tears are unexpected, but I feel better now that they’re out. I can’t remember the last time I cried. And it’s easier to tell the story wrapped in the warm strength of Niko’s embrace.

“Living with Them in my head was hard, and I began to lose sleep. The Furies wanted me to do certain things, but I refused. It began to kill me a little inside. My parents saw the toll it was taking on me and thought it was because of the kidnapping. When they found me a new shrink, I was unlucky enough for it to be Dr. Goodhart.”

Niko snickers. “Dr. Goodhart? That was seriously the man’s name?” I tilt my head back to look at him. He frowns, his dark brows kitting together in an adorable way. My breath catches at the sight, and I want to stop telling my story and kiss him until I can’t breathe. But I continue with a sigh.

“Yeah. He worked for a local program that had this state-of-the-art treatment regimen. Brighter Day, it was called. The kind of place where rich people send their teenagers to have them ‘fixed.’ Drug and alcohol treatment, depression counseling. There was even a special area for kids with eating disorders. Dr. Goodhart had an eighty-eight percent success rate.

“At first it wasn’t so bad. Dr. Goodhart was nice, and the other kids were pretty normal compared to me. I learned a lot there, and even made some friends. It was supposed to be for six months. But then I let it slip that the Furies sometimes told me what to do. Pretty soon he had the whole story out of me. He decided to try an experimental treatment. My parents found out and freaked. On the way to have me discharged, they got into a car accident. It took my grandmother a month to get me out, and when she did, I was little more than a vegetable.”

I remember the way I would sometimes wake up and not know where I was, or even who I was. Sometimes I would think I was trapped in Roland Thomas’s basement again, and start screaming. All the while They would be in my head, whispering to me, urging me to hurt the men in the building. I would dig my nails into my arm, hoping the pain could drive away the fuzziness surrounding my brain. When I drew blood, the orderlies would inject me with something, and Dr. Goodhart’s face would swim above mine, his lips twisted with disgust. “I’m here to save you from yourself, Amelie.”

I shake my head to clear away the memory. “All of the paperwork that my parents had was in the car, and when Grandma realized they’d basically had me committed, she filed to have me pulled out of the program. I moved with her to Savannah. She was a smart woman, and she didn’t trust shrinks. But Dr. Goodhart was obsessed, and eventually followed me to the South.”

Niko shakes his head in disbelief. “Why would he do that? I’m sure there are enough messed-up kids that he didn’t need you.”

“You’re right. There were two reasons. While I was at Brighter Day, I used Their abilities to look into his memories. I found out that he was getting money from drug companies to try out experimental treatments on his patients, usually without their knowledge. He used me as one of his lab rats. More important, though, is that he thought I had multiple personality disorder. It’s like the Holy Grail of crazy, despite what they show on TV. He thought I was the case that would make his career.” Publishing a case study on me would have made him famous, and would’ve made it easier for him to dope up future patients with experimental drugs.

“Goodhart began contacting my grandmother, trying to convince her that something was off about me. She pretty much thought him a quack until I lost control one weekend. She saw me acting weird, and called him for advice.” I bite my tongue as I consider my words.

I won’t mention that I was arrested a week later after an eyewitness saw me standing over the body of one of the guilty. I should tell Niko, let him know what kind of monster I am, but I’m a coward.

Funny as it sounds, it’s more than fear of what he’ll think about me being a killer. I’m still not comfortable with letting him know about my shaky handle on humanity, and I’m afraid of what he’ll do if he knows how little of my compassion remains. Maybe I am too much like Them. Maybe They are close to being in control.