Aaron's Kiss Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 7) (24 page)

Shade moved into her new address later that night, finding a building she could live in. She had scouted this building out before, but found that it was a little too close to the city proper for her tastes. Maybe it would not be so bad now that it was getting colder again, she thought. It did put her a good three miles closer to the kids, which was also good. Shade imaged that the brick structure might hold too much of the heat in the summer months, but the hot days of Ohio weather was still months away.

This site, while smaller than the building she had just vacated, was a little more modern and had running water, which was a surprise. It must have been on the city water system at one time, she thought. There still was no electricity, but she would gladly trade that for not having to go to the little river she had found to take a bath every day. Now with the cooler weather, it was an eye opening experience now that the water temperature had dropped to fifty degrees.

The floors were hardwood planks. While scared and dusty, she could sweep them up in no time. The walls were covered in aged plaster. One whole wall was floor to ceiling windows that opened out with a crank. Amazingly, all the glass was still unbroken. Several of the rooms on the upper floors still had their doors, so that was where she settled. She would use those smaller rooms, probably used as an office at one time, as her bedroom. Scouting around, she found a serviceable desk that she could use as a table and several crates to hide her things in. She had learned not to clean too much on the outter part of the areas and to make sure she kept her footprints to a minimum. If too much was done to an area, transients would come looking for things to steal.

When she was younger, she used to dream about living in a real house, one with running water and heat when she wanted it, but after so long, she had all but given up. Lately, she would settle for three square meals a day and a steady job. Her needs had certainly lowered over the years, she thought with a grimace. Or maybe, she just had gotten a little more realistic. Grim, but true.

Shade had left her blankets for the man at the other place, figuring he might need them more than her. Plus, she was not sure she could stand to touch them after he had. She kept seeing his nasty teeth just before he hit her and then there was his body odor as well. She gently reached up with her free hand and touched her jaw where he had struck her. It was not broken, but it could have been and then re-healed before she had gotten up. The marks from her fall and his fist would be there for the normal amount of time, just like a normal person, healing slowly and fading over time.

It seemed like the more severe the injury, the faster it healed. Which, when she thought about it, made sense. She would heal until she was no longer in a life threatening situation.

Shade had once fallen badly going down a flight of stairs. The step had broken from her weight and she’d tumbled down the ten or so stairs, hitting her head several times against the wall and stairs before coming to an abrupt halt. When she regained conciseness later, she realized that she had punctured her arm high on her bicep. The wound had bled a great deal if the pool under her had been any indication. Within ten minutes after she had woken up, the wound was completely sealed and all that was left was the bruising that accompanied most traumas. She became more careful in the future; the experience had been a real eye-opener.

~CHAPTER THREE~

It was well after ten o’clock two nights later while she was still looking for supplies to furnish her new home when she came upon Brent and Becca out walking around downtown without coats. Becca had on her shoes, but Brent was in a pair of slippers and a single glove.

Brent was holding Becca’s hand and practically dragging her behind him. He was zigzagging back and forth across the busy streets. Seemingly unaware of the cars honking at them and swerving to miss them, he continued on a path that only he seemed to know. Shade moved out to them mentally and found that Brent was hurt and hurt badly. Someone had raped him. Brent’s own mother sold him for her medication, as she called her drugs. She could get a fix. This was not the first time his mother had done this, Shade was sure. It made it no less horrific for the young boy, even after all this time. Her mental touch also showed that he was bleeding and in shock. Shade approached them slowly and cautiously for she did not want to have him run the two of them into the oncoming traffic again.

“Brent, honey, it’s Shade. You know me. What are you doing out so late, sweetie? Come on, come with me.” She spoke very softly.

Shade made no attempt to touch either one of them until they were ready. Becca had been crying and there was blood on her lip. Brent looked like he was terrified and hurting. Her heart poured out to them both. Brent finally looked at her and the dazed look disappeared.

“Can you take Becca with you, Shade? That man, that bad man, he wanted to hurt her again. Momma was needing her medicine again, and he won’t give her credit no more. Will you take Becca for me? I hurt, I...I fell down. I wanted to save her again, but...but he wanted...I fell down hard, Shade. Can you take Becca far, far away for me? Momma don’t care none for us. Please, you gots to help me.”

Brent was sobbing now. Shade’s heart broke for the little boy and his silent sister. She wished she could do more for them. What, she didn’t know, but they needed more than they were getting.

“How about I take you both? We could ride in a taxi. Would you like that? And then I’ll take you to breakfast. We’ll make a time of it, all right? Come with me, Brent. You’ll be safe with me, I promise. I won’t hurt you. You know that, don’t you? Come on then.”

Shade got down on her knees and opened her arms, hoping they would come to her first. He was hurting and scared. She could see his eyes were glazed in pain. He stepped toward her and she held them close. Picking Becca up, she wondered again at the way some people treated their children and how they could live with themselves afterwards.

Shade had been collecting recyclables for the past two days and had gotten twenty dollars for her trouble.  The work was dirty and tiring, but she knew that she could get cleaned up back at her new home. Eat well for the two weeks she could have stretched the money or take care of these two precious children? She would much rather take care of these two.

Shade asked someone with a cell phone to call her a cab, knowing that an ambulance would terrify the poor kids. The lights and noise alone would be twice as bad in the dark night, swirling round and screaming. Besides, in this part of town, a cabbie would chance a rider not coming out, but an ambulance would not come for hours if at all. She had seen it happen time and time again.

By the time they pulled up in front of the hospital some thirty minutes later, Brent had told her what had happened and was sobbing quietly in her arms. The ambulance attendant had backed off when Brent started screaming. The man had merely touched him to take his temperature. Becca sat still, holding her brother’s hand and sucking her thumb. Shade thought again about what horrors these children had seen in their short, short lives.

All during the first month after she had noticed them sitting on the outside stoop of their apartment building, the children were dirty and wearing the same clothing every day. Shade didn’t know the story until she gently reached out and touched the boy. She found that they hadn’t eaten for several days and that the little girl was injured. She had been slapped. Hard, too. Moving toward them, Brent looked up at her and smiled. Shade’s heart melted immediately and she knew he had captured a large part of it.

That afternoon, she’d come back with a large bag of hamburgers she had been able to get for free. It helped sometimes that she was nice. Sitting with them while they ate, she didn’t say a word about their injuries. Brent ate three of the burgers and Becca, he had called her, ate one.

“I’ll be back tomorrow. I want you to be right here, all right? I don’t think you should tell your momma. Just met me here. Can you do that?”

Shade hated making them lie, but she had seen in their minds what sort of person their mother was. And what she did to her children on a daily basis. Shade wondered if the woman even knew that they were out with a stranger, or better yet, if she even cared.

“Yes, ma’am. Momma will takes her medicine and won’t hear us anyways. Me and Becca will be here. I promise.”

She knew that Brent was too young to be responsible for a lot of the things she’d had him do, and giving his little sister a bath would be difficult for him. But Shade knew that they needed to stay clean to stay healthy. Shade had bought them both toothbrushes, bar soap, and a few other things the next day. He now kept both their faces and hands clean and was very proud that he had gotten Becca to go to the potty by herself all the time now. Again, Shade wondered how their mother could be so blind to them, not caring about the precious gifts she had been given.

~~~

It was nearly two hours after they had arrived at the hospital before Shade was able to go back and see Brent. The hospital staff had let Becca go back with him, to sit on his bed and hold his hand because he had screamed and screamed until they had. The police had been called in and Shade had been questioned.

David Wolff knew that Shade did not particularly care for the police as a whole, but there were one or two that she would tolerate. He was one of them, he thought. He wasn’t sure if she knew what he was in reality, him being a were. He had never mentioned it and he didn’t ask. He knew that she was a little different.

“How long have you known the kids, Shade?” David asked her.

She wouldn’t look at him, he noticed; she kept looking at the floor. He knew that was something she did a lot when she was trying to hide something. Not that she lied, just when she didn’t want to tell him what he wanted to know.

David liked Shade. He knew that he was one of the few people who had any information about the girl, and what he had was not very much. He also knew that despite being unemployed right now, she was a great kid. He had been on calls when she’d had a couple of her brushes with the law, nothing major. He had also seen to it that she didn’t serve any jail time for petty theft or whatever.

Shade would not take handouts, and he knew from around the neighborhood that she more often than not gave up whatever money or food she could gather to the kids around the area who needed it. Knowing the neighborhood she frequented, it was probably a daily occurrence.

Shade looked a little thinner than the last time David had seen her. There was a large bruise on her jaw as well. It must still hurt because every once in a while she reached up and gently massaged it. Shade had the look of a kid you wanted to bundle up in a big soft blanket and tuck away somewhere safe. But he knew from past experience she was not the “tuck away somewhere” type. He had also found out the hard way that she was armed—yeah, no tucking for this one, not now and especially not then.

David had found her wandering the streets in what looked like a dazed stupor one night. He could smell the scent of fresh blood on her. He had said her name a couple of times, but she had either not heard him or was ignoring him. He gently touched her arm to get her attention and she had pulled a long knife out and pinned him to the cruiser before he knew what to think. He didn’t move, didn’t even speak waiting for her to realize he was not going to harm her. It was several tense seconds before he saw her see him, recognize him. She jumped back, terror written all over her face, and took off running. He should have followed her, but if he was honest with himself, he was just too relieved to move. She had come very close to decapitating him, very close.

“I’ve seen them around a few times while I was out and about. They’re good kids. Their mother is a druggy though.” Her answer brought him back from that night. He shuddered again at the memory.

“Brent said that you have been bringing him and Becca food by the apartment about every day. That he’d been out looking for you to see if you could take Becca for a while, to keep her safe.” He looked at her, waiting for but not expecting an answer, and he was not disappointed. “Shade? How long have you been providing for these two kids?”

“I told you, I’ve seen them about. What’s the big deal? He found me and asked me to help him, so I did. End of story. Am I in some sort of trouble for helping them?”

David almost laughed at her, but caught himself before he did. She was snarling at him. Snarling like a she wolf. If he had not already been mated.

He knew why she was lying. She didn’t want a paper trail to lead to her or her involvement in this, he figured. She was the most untrusting person he had ever met. He had talked to his grandfather, Charlie, about her once a few weeks back and he said to just be patience. Good things came to those who waited. He loved the old man, but sometimes, like then, he drove him batty.

“No, you’re not in trouble. Calm down, damn it. Brent said that he doesn’t know why you brought him here, that he needs to get home before his momma returns and finds him and Becca gone.” He did not tell her that Brent had asked—no, he had begged him to take Becca, to hide her away and never let anyone hurt her again.

Shade looked up at David sharply. Her voice was heated and full of steel when she answered. David felt the bite of it as a slap on his skin.

“He didn’t tell you what happened, that someone had raped him, that someone had sodomized him, again? That his ‘momma’ sold him for her fix, that he was protecting Becca by letting that man take him instead?”

“Did you see this rape, Shade? Where you there when it happened? Was he the one that hit you?”

David knew that the boy had been sexually abused. He had smelled the semen and blood all over the kid. He could also smell another wolf. Whoever had done this to Brent was a were, and now that David had his scent, he would take care of him. Pack law would deal with its own, by its own laws. The man would be dead before the next new moon. Bradley, his brother and also pack alpha, would see to it. But David would personally kill the man if he had hit Shade. She was like a sister to him, in need of protection, but too damned stubborn to take it.

“Do you think I would have let that bastard touch him if I’d of been there? You know me better than that. He would never have hurt him. I’d of killed the son of a bitch if I knew who had even so much as touched either of them,” she told him angrily with a fiery light in her green eyes, which were turning golden as she spoke. He could also feel the tangy bite of her magic now mixed with her anger. She was powerful, he thought. Her magic pure and white. “What the hell do you mean? They’ll take the word of a kid that he’s all right. Hasn’t anyone examined him yet?”

“They can’t without his mother’s permission. He’s a minor, Shade. You know how the system works.”

David knew that she was aware of the law, probably knew them better than he did. He hated the red tape, but he also knew there were ways of getting around them. And he was planning on having his law take care of the man, any man, who would abuse a child.

“Fuck the system. You know as well as I do that the system isn’t working.” She looked around the room, seemingly embarrassed about her outburst.

“Regardless of what you and I think, they won’t touch him without consent. Now calm down before someone calls for Mark.”

Mark Sales was one of the cops she hated, really hated. David knew this and had pretty much guessed the why. Mark was a number one, class A jerk. And he didn’t care a whit who thought so. Mark had told David once that he thought Shade’s anger at him was funny and that he liked making her pissed at him. David wasn’t afraid of Mark, quite the contrary, but Mark would not keep her out of the report and then she would be in the system again.

He lowered his tone so that only she could hear him and told her that the man would be dealt with, and soon.

“Dealt with in a way that neither Brent nor Becca will ever have to be afraid of him again, I promise. Pack law reaches beyond civilian law.”

David felt Shade float through his mind. She was gentle, but thorough. He was surprised by that; she had never done that to him before. He started to ask her, but then remembered the last time he had asked her what she was, thinking she was a witch or something. That argument had been so intense and had ended with her avoiding him for several weeks afterwards. He filed away this information for later consideration and continued on as though nothing had happened.

“They’re gonna keep them both here over night. I convinced a doctor friend of mine that they might look a little too cold, and Becca looked a little ill. And before you ask, yes, they will be kept together. So, you want me to drop you off at home?”

David was angling for an address, anything in way of information he could get from her. She was very secretive about anything personal and he worried about her. A beautiful woman like her needed to be protected, and his wolf agreed with him.