Aaron's Kiss Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 7) (25 page)

She, of course, declined, and left shortly after she had kissed both kids goodnight. She was gone maybe twenty minutes when he realized she hadn’t said who had hit her. Damned girl, she needed a keeper.

~~~

Colin was not having a great night. He had been called away for Realm business. Aaron had asked him to go to Chicago of all places and pick up some paperwork from Aaron’s attorney. Aaron trusted only Colin with the information in the packet as it was personal, and since Sara was now pregnant, he wanted to stay as close to her as possible.

Gee, didn’t see that one coming
, he thought with a grin Sara pregnant. They went at it like bunnies, and Colin was sure that he had interrupted them a couple of times in the kitchen of all places.

Sara was only about five weeks, but everything about her was so wacked, that no one was taking any chances with her or the baby. As it stood now, she drank blood from Aaron with fangs of her own, she could stay out in the sun all day, and she could also eat human food—boy, could she ever pack it away for such a tiny thing. Aaron wanted her to stay close to him at all times because who knew what could happen?

It was just as well, Colin thought, that Aaron had sent him far away. Colin had been spending all his time hanging out at “that woman’s” apartment building for days now.
Why?
he kept asking himself, when he didn’t have the slightest idea. But he was afraid of becoming recognized, or worse yet, thought of as a stalker.

Vampires tried to keep as low a profile as possible, and now days with camera phones and Facebook, it was getting harder and harder to do that. And with more and more of them going mainstream, it was getting hard for them to stay low key.

Colin had a vampire friend, Mary Elliott, tell him that he should embrace the new world. Whatever the hell that meant. She’d had a Facebook page for months, she’d told him, and she even suggested that he get one as well.

“I love it. Look, I have four thousand friends. You should see the ridiculous things humans say about our kind. And you would not believe the things they still believe,” she had told him.

“Like what? Do they still think that garlic will harm us and wearing a cross will keep us from biting them?”

He had tried to dissuade her from opening the account. But now that she had, he wanted to know what she learned. Besides, it was a way to pass the time with someone he didn’t have to be on guard with all the time.

“Oh no, they still believe that. Thankfully, movies and the telly have made that myth a near impossibility to disprove. But they actually believe that we can turn into bats and will spontaneously combust into flames when we are in the sun too long.”

They did not combust, actually, but exploded. Their blood would heat to be so hot that it would boil them from the inside and then kill them. After that, it was a matter of seconds before they exploded, their bodies simply disintegrating.

“Have you posted your picture yet?” Colin asked her as he settled in for the day.

Another myth was that they couldn’t have their pictures taken. Colin believed that story was actually made up by one of their kind, along with the crosses and garlic usage. While he did not eat human food, he did enjoy the smell of a nice marinara sauce with lots of fresh garlic. And the smell of it roasting was manna to him.

“Yeah. Would you like to see? I have gotten so many comments on it that I got a little note from the administrator of the page for me to take it down. Silly man. As if.”

They both got a big kick out of her picture. It was so blurry that no one could make out any features except that it was a female body. She had set her timer on her camera and had blurred by the lens several times to get the effect that she wanted.

Colin didn’t open an account as she had begged him to do, but he promised her if he ever did, he would friend her first. Colin wondered what Aaron would think if he sent him an invite to “friend” him and decided that it just wasn’t worth the argument that would result of him having one. Nope, better to keep a low profile.

~CHAPTER FOUR~

Shade went to the hospital to visit Brent and Becca the next morning. She ended up walking this time, simply not having the money for another taxi trip. The snow was deep, but not near as deep as it would be in a few more months, maybe less than that if the sky was any indication.

It was time to see about getting a winter coat, she thought as she walked along the streets shivering. Shade wished like hell she was living in her little cubby hole again. She knew just where to sit to stay warm on days like today. And she had her blankets too. She had been able to replace a few of them, but not like she’d had before.

When she got to the hospital, Shade found out that their esteemed mother had decided to come to get them. The staff was in a tizzy because Brenda Shell had accused them of kidnapping her precious children right out from under her “sitter’s” care. She claimed that everyone was out to get her, that they were trying to make it difficult for a single mother to raise her own children, on and on. The staff was used to this kind of bull shit from her type. The staff had been upset because the kids had been sobbing and not wanting to go with her. They had wanted to keep the poor little souls.

Shade was upset that they had not kept them there. She tried hard not to take it out on the nurses. But sometimes, she really hated dealing with the Brendas of the world. The type of people who felt as though the world owed them and that the system was set up just for their usage. Shade knew that everyone wasn’t like that, but Brenda just brought out the worst in her.

Shade and Brenda had had a go around about two weeks after Shade had started bringing stuff for the kids. She had just found out that Brenda was selling the food she was giving the kids for drug money and not making sure her children were properly cared for. She had confronted Brenda about it, but not in a very smart way, she knew now.

They had nearly come to blows when Shade’s abilities had gotten a little heated and had thrown Brenda across the room without Shade touching her. And as it happened with drunks and dopers, she bounced rather well instead of breaking bones. After that, Shade started meeting the kids in the lower stairwell and fed them there rather than taking anything up to the actual apartment. That wasn’t the last time they’d been toe to toe about the children, but it was the scariest.

Brent had never commented on the different arrangements when Shade had asked him to meet her down under the stairs instead of outside the apartment door. He just started bringing himself and Becca down whenever Shade gave him a little push to leave the apartment. Shade figured there was no harm in the little magic she used, not when it was a benefit to him. Neither Shade nor Brent’s apartment had a phone and she only called to him when there was food.

Shade decided to scope out a few of her regular places to see if they needed any extra help for the day. She started out by going to the places she knew would pay honest wages for honest work. It was not as though Shade never had money, she just didn’t have a steady income. It was difficult without the address everyone wanted. But what was worse, as far as employers were concerned, was that she didn’t have any identification either, not even a social security card.

Over the two next weeks, she was able to get enough work to get some much needed supplies while keeping an eye on the kids. Getting the food to them proved to be easier after that night, but Shade knew that it was only a matter of time before their mother started neglecting them again, or worst yet, selling them.

Her first purchase was a used coat and some boots. She was also able to get a sub-zero sleeping bag at the Army/Navy store, something she had never had before. The guy at the shop, Melville, was a really sweet older gentleman and he had saved it for her behind the counter. He had told her if she hadn’t have come in soon, he was going to go looking for her to give it to her personally. He had always been really nice to her, even before she had helped him out once when he had locked his keys in his car. She had used one of her abilities to pop the lock, but he thought she had used the coat hanger he had given her. There had been no harm done in helping him this way and he’d been good to her since.

Shade purchased herself another knife while she was at it too. This one heavier with a thinner, longer blade than the others, sharper too. Then a few personal items from the local Wal-Mart—deodorant, tampons, shampoo, things every girl needed. Even with that, and the promise of more work from a couple of the people she had helped out this week, she still had about fifty dollars left over. She decided to pick up a pizza and go by and see the kids, take them a hot meal for a change. Well, as hot as it could be walking with it in her hands in Ohio winter weather, she thought with a small laugh.

Shade heard the screaming before she even hit the second flight of stairs up. She didn’t even stop at their usual meeting place, but flew up the stairs. She had tried to contact Brent mentally, but kept coming up against a wall. Dropping the box, she ran up, hoping it wasn’t Brent again.

Shade crashed through the opening as soon as she realized it was coming from the kids’ apartment. The door opened with a crash before she could touch it. Shade’s magic billowed out from her in a heated flash and blew through the room.

One look around the room confirmed her worse nightmare. Brent was lying in a small heap across from the open window in the living room, naked and bleeding from his ears and mouth. He was covered in blood, too much to see where he was wounded and where the blood was coming from. She knew now why she hadn’t been able to reach out to him.

There was a large man, werewolf, she realized, holding Becca by one leg upside down and shaking her like her rag doll. Shade knew immediately that the little girl was dying, her scent and her heart sounds echoing into Shade’s mind. There was blood all over Becca as well, running down her little cheek and dripping on the floor underneath her in a growing stain.

Brenda was slumped over on the coach and was watching the man shake her daughter with a drug induced smile on her face. Her eyes were glazed over and she looked to have a trail of spittle running down her lip. Shade took this all in within seconds. Brenda looked over at Shade just as the door hit the opposite wall.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here, bitch?” Brenda slurred angrily. “Get outta here afore I call the police on your ass. He ain’t hurtin’ her, just having a little fun. He paid me real good for some fun. He ain’t hurtin’ her.” Brenda looked back at the man and grinned. “You ain’t hurtin’ her, are ya, baby?”

By now, Becca was not making any more noise, not a sound from her mouth, and very little from her tiny heart. She hung there so limp that Shade was sick to her stomach. Something settled over and through her as she moved into the room, her body becoming hard and alert. She calmed, readied herself for whatever needed to be done.

With a suddenness that startled even the sod on the couch, Shade struck out at the man. With one blade and then another, Shade lunged at him, slicing and cutting at him, backing him against the wall as she moved to him in precise, timed movements.

In his attempt to keep Shade from hurting him, he held Becca in front of him as a human shield. But Shade never once touched the child; her knives seemed to move beyond Becca and into the man. He gave up trying to protect himself with Becca when he seemed to realize that Shade wasn’t hurting her, wasn’t touching her.

When he tossed Becca across the room, Shade snatched her before she hit the floor, snagging her seemingly from the air. Surging forward with the little girl cradled in her arm, Shade stabbed the man in the upper right shoulder blade, the force of the impact so strong it pinned him to the wall. So deep that he would need to tear muscle tissue and break a bone to pull away. In addition, this particular knife was made of silver, not her usual stainless steel, so he couldn’t pull away without serious harm to himself, and to his body.

Shade took the little girl over to where her brother lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. Becca was so still, Shade realized. Too still for a child. She began rocking Becca in her arms, crying and talking softly to her. Shade could tell that Becca was near death. Her wounds were so severe that Shade knew she would die without medical attention. When Shade heard a noise at the door, she looked up as one of the neighbors came to the door, her body already readying for another attack.

“I done called the cops. Every night it’s the same shit. If’n it ain’t them kids screaming, it’s her a’screaming at them.”

Shade, for the most part, ignored her and went back to holding the children close to her. When the neighbor, Lisa Coleman—Shade had read the name from the mailbox downstairs—handed Shade a couple of blankets a few minutes later to cover them with, Shade thanked her, surprised that she had left and come back already. Lisa then plopped down on the couch, not saying much at first.

“I wanna know what you think you’re doing in my apartment. You need to get your ass home right now, you stupid cow. I gots myself some entertaining to do and it don’t involve the likes of you.”

Shade glanced over at Brenda when she started yelling at Lisa from her slumped position on the lumpy, dirty couch. Not that she really cared, but Shade had forgotten about her. Her total focus had been on the children.

When Lisa got up, Shade thought for sure she was going to leave her here with Brenda and was thoroughly surprised when the shorter woman backhanded Brenda right across the mouth. Lisa had hit Brenda hard enough that she fell over the back of the couch and landed in a lump on the floor. Neither Shade nor Lisa checked to see if Brenda was okay. Neither woman cared whether she was dead nor not, or so it seemed.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for months,” Lisa said with a grin. “Never thought hitting a person could be so satisfying. Not that I wanna do it again, but boy, that sure felt good. I’m Lisa Coleman by the way.” Shade might have laughed if she hadn’t been so sick of Brenda too.

“Shade Doe. And thank you very much for your help.” Then Shade went back to watching over the two children while Lisa seemed to watch over Shade.

The man pinned against the wall started screaming at them to take the fucking knife outta him. One stern look from Lisa had him shut right up. Shade ignored him for the most part. Her heart was broken, as broken as the little girl in her arms. She rocked her gently and hummed some tune she had heard a long time ago, going back and forth, back and forth.

When the police arrived, they asked a lot of questions, then they took Brenda and the wolf into custody. Shade as well. When the ambulance arrived a few minutes later, the children were taken away, both still alive for now. Shade could tell that the medics were shocked and not very hopeful about their chances of survival. Becca was in the worst shape; her injuries were massive and she had lost a great deal of blood. Both children, an attendant had said to her partner, had evidently been raped repeatedly.

Shade sat in the jail cell alone, her heart aching for what she had witnessed and done. The police, knowing Brenda, knew that most, if not all, she was telling them was not the whole truth. And no matter what Brenda and the man, Peterson, had claimed, they knew enough about Shade to know that she couldn’t have done what they were telling them.

Shade didn’t have anyone to call, not really. She didn’t have a lawyer and wouldn’t have the money to pay one if she did. She had called the hospital as soon as she could make her one call to see if her friend nurse Diana Ridge would please make sure the kids got the care they deserved.

“You should not worry about dem kids; I’ve seen dem in here enough to know what the poor lambs need. You needin anythin, sweetie?”

Diana didn’t know that Shade had been arrested with the kid’s mom, apparently.  Shade didn’t tell her either. She thought if she knew, maybe she wouldn’t watch over the kids for her.

“No, ma’am, I’m fine. Just please watch out for Brent and Becca. I’ll be in as soon as I can, all right?”

“You got it, kiddo.” There was a long pause and Shade was nervous as to why. “The little one, the little girl, she’s in surgery. And they are a working on the boy. They’s in bad shape, you know? But I’ll be right here for ‘em. Just you take care you stay away from that bitch, you hear?”

Diana had been a nurse for a very long time, and would be for much longer, Shade hoped. Nurses like her were born to care for people and Shade was very glad she knew her.

“Yeah, I’ll do that. Thank you, Mrs. Ridge. You don’t know how much…you are a very nice person.”

She hung up and leaned her head against the wall. The female officer quietly handed her a tissue and walked far enough away for Shade to have a few minutes of privacy. Shade sobbed quietly, crying into the tissue and hurting for the stupidity of it all.

They held them for nearly fourteen hours. Shade had told them what had happened from the time she had entered the apartments seven times so far. She hurt. She hadn’t realized when it was happening that the man, Bob Peterson, had hit her with his fists quite a few times before she had gotten the better of him. Her jaw and ribs were bruised, and she was sure that a couple of them were cracked. Those injuries would not heal as fast as a life threatening wound would. She would have to suffer through them along with the nightmare she had just witnessed.

Shade was told that she couldn’t leave town—like she could even if she wanted to—and that she was to appear in court the following Monday morning at eight o’clock. They had appointed her an attorney fresh out of college, an intern. Her name was Madison Harm. She seemed nice enough. The court appearance was in four days.