12. Emily

TWELVE

EMILY

Wesley seems a little more talkative than the four of them put together. He's been on the phone for most of the night, but I'm not sure who he's talking to because like them he never says anyone's names.

I come out of the bedroom, when I smell something mouth-watering good coming from the kitchen, not smelled anything this nice since my mums cooking.

"I hope you like chicken pasta, I have a feeling you've not had a cooked meal in a while," Wesley asks, holding up two bowls.

Staying by the door, I can't help but smile, chicken pasta was a family classic in the house. If no one knew what to make, this was the meal we made, together.

"Come on, before I have to leave for work." He walks over to the couch, and I grab two beers from the fridge before joining him.

"Will I be by myself?" I ask him, placing the beers on the table, and picking up my bowl.

"No, one of the guys will be here." Wesley hands me a fork and starts eating. "I have to say this is good." I laugh as he continues to praise his meal. I feel like he's the man who keeps the four of them human, because you get to see his face, and he talks to others more freely.

I take a fork full of the pasta wanting to see if it's as good as he says it is. And I can't lie, this is some good pasta.

"This is good." Leaning back into the couch, bringing my legs up close to my body. "What's the recipe?" I ask, this is the first time I'm going to have a conversation with someone in a while. I'm going to make the most of it.

"It's my fiancé's family recipe, she used to make it every weekend." The smile on his face is so cute, and I study his face for a moment. He looks quite old, I'd say late fifties I'd thought he would be married with kids. I go to talk but stop when I rethink what he said. He didn't say she makes it every weekend, he said she used to make it.

"What happened to your fiancé? You don't have to answer if you don't want to." I quickly add because I see his body flinch at my question.

"She was murdered, many years ago-" He stops and takes another fork full of pasta, before turning to face me. "-And I'm still chasing the people who killed her. The guys are also hunting the same people. I met them when they were still little boys, but their story is for them to tell you, not me, so don't ask," He jokes, and I have to laugh before I reply to him.

"I have a feeling you wouldn't answer anything about themselves even if I did ask." The four of them will always be a mystery to me, but I'm not going to push anything with them, because they're helping me, and I'm thankful for that. "But if you can answer one question, I'd like that."

Wesley turns his head to face me, his lips curl into a smile. "Ask, then I will see if I answer."

"Is Red Eyes as scary as he makes out, and is White Eyes as gentle as he seems?"

Wesley shakes his head chuckling a little to himself. "All four of them are scary if you ask me, they will kill anyone who gets in the way without a second thought, they're four crazy men who I trust with my life. When they trust someone fully they're the most loyal men you'll ever meet, everyone has a past, remember that. But Red Eyes I would say is the worst, followed by Blue Eyes." He gets back to his food, and I do the same because I don't know what to say to him, he didn't say anything about White Eyes. "White Eyes, he can rip your throat out, but if any one of them four thinks before he kills it's him," he adds, before reading the message on his phone which beeped before he spoke.

I thought the same about White Eyes because he didn't want to kill me straight away, he was the only one fighting to save me.

I jump a little when there is a knock at the door, and Wesley gets up, and without even looking to see who it is he opens the door. Soon as White Eyes walks in, he locks eyes with mine, my body relaxes, but his body is so tense which scares me.

"Did you make enough dinner for me?" he asks, using the creepy computer voice which I hated, but now kind of like it.

"There is never enough food to fill you four up," Wesley walks over to the kitchen and puts some in a bowl for him. "How is she?" Wesley asks, and it brings all my attention to the conversation, wondering who they're talking about.

"Keeping her in the hospital to do some tests, he's staying there." White Eyes takes the bowl from Wesley and they walk over to the couch and sit down, ignoring the fact I'm sitting here too.

"Not surprised, how is he?" Wesley continues to eat the last of his pasta, and I do the same watching White Eyes, bring his bandana up a bit, then moves the mask so I can only see his lips, just his lips, which I still remember touching mine.

"Angry, hope he doesn't kill anyone throughout the night," I see his lips curl up into a smile before he takes a mouthful of pasta. "One is going back to drop him some things off." He leans back into the couch, and closes his eyes.

"How about you?" Wesley asks him, taking a quick glance over to me then pats his leg.

"Living," he sits back up and grabs the bowl of pasta, then looks over at me. "Are there any beers left?"

"I'll get one," I get off the couch, and walk into the kitchen, and as I turn back to walk over, I stop when I see White Eyes leaning in closer to Wesley saying something telling me it's something they don't want me to hear, so I stay where I am for a moment.

I watch White Eyes body movement, the outfits they wear you can't tell anything about them. It covers every inch of them, and they are loose so you can't tell what type of body they have either.

Wesley stands up letting me know they have finished, and I open the beer bottle and hand it over to White Eyes.

"I'll go over to give them some pasta, and talk-" He turns to face me with a smile. "-I'll see you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow," I say, sitting back down, and finishing the rest of my food. I watch White Eyes as he eats, throwing a few things on the table, then see it's everything he needs to make a joint. "How has your day been?" I ask, not sure if he will tell me, but the silence is annoying.

He doesn't reply and continues to eat his dinner. I see him reach out for my drawing pad, and I don't stop him, there isn't anything in there for me to hide. He opens it to the first page, then brings the pad closer to him.

"Who's this?" he asks.

"My sister." I wait for him to say something, but he doesn't, all he does is rip the page out, fold it up and put it in his pocket, then continues to look through the pad.

Turning the pad to the side, he looks at the picture I drew of the four of them together, the only ones I can think about at the moment, but then he will see I've drawn him a lot more. He continues to look at the picture of the four of them, and turns his head slightly towards me.

"This is the first picture of the four of us dressed like this, and it's fucking amazing." He puts the pad on the table so he can finish the last of his pasta. "You can draw that's for sure."

Pushing his empty bowl to the side, he rolls up his joint, and I clear the table, and wash up the dishes, giving me the perfect view of him flicking through the pages of my drawings.

Putting the pad back on the table, he leans back taking a drag of his joint and closes his eyes.

"You want me to get you a blanket?" I ask him, he shakes his head. "Do you need anything?" I ask.

"No," he keeps his eyes closed while smoking his joint, and I sit back down and grab the drawing pad so I can draw some more pictures. "You know I have to burn the pictures of us," I look at him in shock.

"Why?" I ask, holding back the annoyance in my tone.

"Because people will ask where you saw us, we don't want that." He takes another drag of his joint, before turning to face me. "It's even that or I kill you so you keep your mouth shut."

An ice-cold shiver beats through me, the first time since this fucked up situation started. Am I scared of White Eyes? I wish I could see his eyes to see if he's not fucking with me, and it's a joke, but the white eyes staring into my soul right now are only giving me an ice-cold death.

I look through the pad, and rip out every picture of them, and hand them over to him, he looks through them all but stops at the one with the four of them, and takes a quick picture.

"The others would like this one." He puts his phone back into his pocket, then puts the papers on the table, then smokes his joint as if nothing has happened.

He takes the lighter out of his pocket, and holds the papers up, and sets them on fire. I watch him looking at the flame moving his head slightly as the flames do. The fire gets closer to this hand, he's not letting them go, but I say nothing watching him, the burned paper begins to fall onto his hands, and the flame is very close now.

"You-"

"It will be fine," he tells me, and then puts the paper in the ashtray. He continues to watch the last of the flames, and I say nothing more.

"Do you want to watch a movie?" I ask.

He's darker than he normally is. I don't know what's happened today, but I'm scared of him right now.

"Sure." One quick answer, and for a moment I just stare at him, not sure if it's me waiting for another comment from him about what he wants to watch, or if it's just me wanting to look at him for longer.

I get off the couch and see what DVDs are here, shocked that people still own these things, because you can watch so much more on streaming sites now. I asked Wesley about it, and she laughed, telling me if they logged on here with an account, I would know their name or something. After that I choose not to say anything.

"Action or-"

"I think Batman is there, the one with Bane." He gets off the couch and heads to the kitchen while I look through the collection for the movie. "Have you seen it?" I hear him behind me.

"Not much of an action movie girl," I reply. Still looking for it, I like comedy films, the world is a dark, horrible place. Why would I want to watch that in movies?

I put the DVD in, and get up to walk back to the couch, and White Eyes is standing behind me looking down at me. Why is he so tall, and powering, why do I find that a turn on? Am I crazy to be attracted to him when I haven't seen an inch of his skin?

I take in his aftershave, the woody, marine smell hits me, and I smile.

"You'll love it, Bane is a man I can relate with-" he stops when I narrow my brows together, and his lips curl into a smirk. "There will be things he says which feel like he's talking about me. One of my favourite quotes ; ‘Oh, you think darkness is your ally. But you merely adopted the dark; I was born in it, moulded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding! The shadows betray you because they belong to me.' " My body tenses up without me even realising I did it, and then he leans in closer to me, his lips brushing my skin as he moves to my ear. "And another ; ‘Speak of the devil and he shall appear.'" My hands move to his chest, because I want to know if his heart is pounding against his chest like mine is, but it's not. "Don't worry little tiger, no one will touch you." The words whispered in my ear before he walks away from me, and I just watch him smiling as he brings the joint back between his lips watching me.

I swallow the lump in my throat, because I was hoping he would have kissed me, or pushed me against the wall...I shake my head, what the hell is happening to me, he scared the fucking crap out of me, yet I want him to kiss me, fuck me, anything as long as it's him touching me.

I lick my dry lips and sit on the couch leaving a gap between us, and he turns to face me.

"So, are you Bane?" I ask, making him laugh a little.

"In a way I am." He stops for a moment, taking a drag of his joint, as the smoke escapes through his nose he speaks again. "But the four of us were raised from the pits of hell, we take pleasure in killing those who do wrong. Hell raised us, but we'll make it burn like it's never burned before."

Before I can even reply to him, he hits play on the film, and turns his body to get a better view of the TV, but all I'm watching is him.

What did the four of them go through, to make them into the men they are today? They walk around like ghosts, they're there one second and gone the next.

Who are they going to burn? Who raised them?

"Watch the film, little tiger." He picks up his beer, and I grab mine off the table, and turn to the screen, but still glance over at him a few times, because now I crave him, to see him, for him to touch me, and it makes me sound fucking crazy.