13. Nitro

THIRTEEN

NITRO

Nyx sent me a message early in the morning to give me an update on Esha, and I'm not surprised she's home. The doctor got annoyed with Ares, telling them they weren't looking after her well enough. Nyx said the doctor told Ares he can take her home, but she needs to be back in the hospital the moment she wakes up, so they can get things ready for the test.

Wesley came to the apartment this morning after his shift, and all I want is my bed. One thing about demons, they know when to come out and play.

The second you close your eyes.

I walk around in my bedroom, trying to fight the sleep, but I'm losing. My eyes are growing heavy, my head is in pain, and the joint isn't enough to help me at the moment.

All I need is an hour, an hour of peace and I'll be good for the day, I'll be able to function.

I lie down in bed, staring at the ceiling. A part of me wants to knock on Ares' door for him to put the demons away, to help me get some sleep.

We all have our way to cope with the shit we went through, but not one of us can do it alone all the time. Ares is the one who helps me, and Nyx. Nyx helps Ares and Tic. Both being the oldest they didn't think it was right for me or Tic to do anything. A part of me wants to help my brothers, but I also know what each of us needs to realise the demons, and I'm not sure I could help them do it, I can barely do it to myself.

I pick up my lighter, and start flicking the flame on and off, hoping the sound of the flame lets me go to sleep.

"You're my favourite," The man whispers in my ear, and my body shivers when I feel his breath on my skin. "You've become a young boy and look how handsome you've become."

They can see me, but I can't see them. Every time they bring me into the room they cover my eyes so I never know who's in the room with me. But no matter what they do to me, I will always remember their voice, because it's the only voice I've ever heard.

In the darkness, you sense everything around you so much more, and now I know every voice who has ever touched me.

I feel the fingertips of the man in front of me on my stomach, his wet disgusting tongue sliding slowly over my jaw. I can fight him, but it never gets me anywhere, but more pain.

I've been here so long I can't even remember a life outside this place. I've learned to take the pain. When you take pain over and over again it soon becomes a pain in your life. You soon crave the pain they give you. I crave the pain now.

I scream when the fire hits my skin, before I can block the pain, they remove it.

"Do you understand how excited I get when you scream like that." The man brushes his lips against mine, and I feel his dick against my leg. "Looking forward to finishing inside you."

I take a deep breath, because this is only the start of the night, and it's only going to get worse.

"You've been with us from the beginning, this is all you've ever known, and soon you'll beg us to do it."

My eyes open, quickly sitting up in bed. "You've been with us from the beginning." The words play with me, I was always there.

I walk over to Ares' bedroom, he's been reading the notebooks. There must me something in there about a baby being born in the fucking hell hole.

"Ares, I need to talk." I knock on the door, quietly hoping not to wake Esha up. "Ares," I knock again.

I hear movement and take a step back when the door opens. Ares stands in front of me, and I can see he's having a fight with his own demons tonight too.

"I need to talk to you," he looks over his shoulder at Esha sleeping in bed then back to me. "Sorry," I whisper when he walks back towards the bed and grabs his t-shirt.

"Is this a beer conversation or a coffee?" Ares smiles as he shuts the door behind him. I have a feeling it might be a long talk.

"Coffee."

As we get downstairs, I walk over to the notebooks, and Ares walks over to get some coffee ready. I smile when I see him take a shot of whiskey.

"Did you get any sleep?" Ares asks.

"Did you?" I ask the same question.

Not sure any of us sleep more than an hour or two.

Ares lights a cigarette, brings over two mugs, and the coffee pot and places it on the table, and I look over at the notepads.

"Are they in order?" I ask.

"Somewhat, if I go with information on the last and first page, but as I read through them I will know better. What happened?" Ares slides a mug of coffee towards me, and I don't know what to say to him, without him thinking I only care about finding my parents.

"I had a memory-"

"Lift your t-shirt up," Ares cuts me off, and I stare at him for a moment, before standing up, and showing him my burn scar from only a moment ago. "You put cream on that?"

"Not yet, but I will." I know why he's asking, once I burned myself so bad I fucked up my skin on my inner thigh. The guys had to change the bandage every few hours. As soon as the skin was strong enough, I covered it up with a tattoo.

"What's on your mind?" Ares asks, not mentioning anything about the burn scars.

"I was about to fall asleep-" I stop when both Ares and I smile at the same time, knowing what I mean. "- and the memory said something to me, something I've never had before. It said, you've been with us from the beginning." I stop when Ares sits up a little straight, but continue when he doesn't say anything. "I was thinking the beginning could mean, I was born there-"

"Nitro-"

"Ares, hear me out please. I've never known anything outside that place until we escaped, I have no memory at all of the world before that place-"

"Neither do I, but-"

"Ares, you've never wanted to know, but we found out you had a life-"

"Stop!" Ares snaps, and I shut up.

I have no idea why the man doesn't want to read the file Wesley got for him, it tells him everything he needs to know about his family, but he doesn't care. He's never been interested in knowing what happened, but I have. I want to know if my parents sold me, or was I taken, did I ever have a family who loved me.

"You had a life before them, you've chosen to lock it all out, and I don't blame you. I'm trying to find answers, I want answers, wouldn't my subconscious want to help me. The only thing I remember is hell, so maybe I was born there." I stop because the thought makes me sick, I know what they did to me, to us so the thought of me being born there means my mother was only a child. "I think-" I shake my head, because now the thought makes me angry, makes me want to kill them even more.

"What I've been reading in the notebooks, there is nothing about a baby being born there, but I'm still at the start. What I can do is stop and move forward. Around the time of our age, and see if anything was written." Ares looks over my shoulder, nods his head, counting the books. "I'll be skipping about four decades, give or take." He looks back towards me, for a moment he doesn't say anything. "I'll start reading, I'll let Nyx know what I'm doing, so he can keep up with all the tabs of missing people we find." He fills his mug with more coffee, and I slide my mug over to refill.

"That's all I'm asking." I lean back in chairs and look over at Tic walking out his bedroom chewing on something the fucker shouldn't be chewing on. I nod at Ares to look behind him, and then I look over at Nyx who is walking out too, looks like someone else was having a fucked-up night.

"Seems like the demons played with all of us tonight," Nyx says as he walks over to the table, and takes my coffee.

"Mine were hiding tonight, someone wanted to talk," Nyx and Ares both look at me, and I shake my head.

"We'll talk later," Ares tells him.

"So, what's on the plan for the day?" Nyx sits down with us, it'sn been a long time since we've sat here and talked about work, or what we have planned.

"Wesley's with Emily all day, I have clients until five, and I'm also waiting for Hunter or Raven to call, then it's me who's taking over from Wesley." We won't let Tic stay alone with her because we don't want him to have an episode around her. Nyx will be going to the bar tonight like most nights, and Ares, well he scares the crap out of her.

"Soon as Esha wakes up, it's back to the hospital, we will be there the whole day" Ares looks over at Tic as he sits next to him.

"How is she?" I ask.

"Head is hurting a lot, hating the light at the moment, but other than that she's good-" Ares stops when my phone rings, because the only person who will ring us this early is Wesley.

"Hello," I answer, putting the phone on speaker.

"Is everyone awake?" He asks, no names mentioned, but Emily should be sleeping now it's crazy early in the morning.

"Yes," I answer.

"Get here and bring you're fucking laptop too." Before we can ask what's happened, the line goes dead.

I was with him an hour ago, and he said work was good, nothing interesting had happened.

Everyone finishes their coffee, then gets up to get changed into our ghost clothes.

Getting into the apartment and joining Wesley on the couch. Emily is nowhere to be seen, meaning she's sleeping.

"A new victim in the morgue, John Doe. Can't find them in the system anywhere, thought you'd want to see something though." He opens his laptop, and turns it to face us. I stand up joining my brothers.

The video starts, and I sit back on the couch to look at the screen better. "What the fuck?" I whisper as I continue to watch the man looking with blood shot eyes, being held in a room, staring at himself in the mirror. We can't hear anything, but we're seeing everything he's seeing, the mirror. It goes blank for less than a minute, before a piece of paper is put in front of him. You don't learn do you, Detective?

We all look at Wesley as he paces the room, then gets back to the screen.

You lost your wife, what else do you have to lose?

Stop looking for us!

The screen goes blank, and I put the video back to the start when the man is looking in the mirror.

"Where is the body?" Ares asks, and I lean closer to the screen. There has to be something in the mirror, maybe I can see something.

"The morgue in town," Wesley turns to face us. "I got an email a few days ago, didn't think much of it. But then I got this video, and information about a body in the morgue."

So many years have passed since they killed Wesley's fiancé, but he will never forget, not even when we kill them all.

"Where's the email?" Nyx asks.

Wesley looks through his phone, and I stop the video when the mirror appears, so I can start looking through it once we know what the email says. He hands the phone to Nyx who reads it out loud.

"We've been keeping tabs on you, the cases you're looking at. Stop looking for us, or people close to you will die, and it will be fun to kill them like we killed your wife." Nyx hands him his phone back, and everyone sits on the couch. "If they're watching you, they haven't seen us with you, so it means they're only looking at your work."

"I've been watching everyone at work, I don't think it's anyone-"

"It's got to be someone higher up, they're looking into your cases," I tell him. "Why the fuck didn't you tell us about the email? Someone is watching and-" I stop before I say something I shouldn't, because I'm pissed off he didn't think he needed to tell us about this. What if they saw him with us, or tried to fucking attack him.

"I didn't think-"

"Wesley, you have to tell us this shit, you might think you're just a guy in our life, but you're not. You're fucking family, if anything happens to you then it will be-" I stop on the words, because I can't think about it. The man is a father to us, and losing him isn't something any of us want.

"I'll talk to you next time," Wesley tells us, and I look back down at the laptop and forward the email to myself, so I can break the image piece by piece. I've lived with these people, I know how good they are at covering their tracks and hiding in plain sight. But maybe the fucked up, just once.

"I will start looking to see if anyone is logging into my system. You think they know about you?" Wesley asks, I was thinking the same thing.

The four of us look between each other, before turning to Wesley.

"If they did, they would have said something." Nyx looks down at the laptop, before talking again. "Plus, they said they're looking at your cases, which means you've got a case they don't want you looking into."

We all turn to Wesley who shakes his head. "My pile is huge, I get rid of one file, and six more appear."

"I'm going to the morgue to get the eye-"

"What?" I cut Ares off.

"We did it your way last time, and the fucking eye melted, so we're taking it now," Ares snaps at me, and I tell him to fuck off.

"And what makes you think it won't happen again?" I ask, we have no idea what the hell is going on with the camera in the eye, we've never seen it before so we don't know how to work with it.

"Then we know we can't take the fucking eye out don't we. They seem to be a few fucking steps in front of us at the moment, and we have to do something to catch up don't we?" Ares looks between the three of us, and he has a point. I know he has a point, but we're giving that poor boy more pain. Yes, he's dead, but it still doesn't make it right.

"When you go to the hospital, go to the morgue, then call to let us know if you got it or not," Nyx tells Ares, and I shake my head slamming the laptop shut. "You comb through the video, but first we have day jobs to get to."

I let out a small chuckle, talking about killing an organisation one minute, then going to our day job the next.

"I'll look through it between clients." I look over at the bedroom door, and for a second I wonder what Emily sleeps in. I wonder if she sleeps naked, or in something I can rip off her body. "Can you bring your case files over?" I ask Wesley as I turn to face everyone. Tic hands me a joint which he's just rolled up, then starts rolling another one, and I light the one in hand.

No sleep, and now a day full of work, and research, it's going to be one long day.

"I can, but it will be a few at a time. If someone is watching me, I can't be seen taking the whole pile." Wesley sits back down on the couch and looks up at the four of us. "Don't you boys have jobs?"

"We're going," Ares tells him, being the first to leave.

"I'll be over as soon as I'm done, day off tomorrow?" I ask him, I wanted Nyx to come but he said he needs to go to the bar.

"Day off, so if something comes up, I'll be here." He starts laughing, and I narrow my brows together, what's he laughing at. "I have no life, I'm going to die an old lonely man."

"You've said that knowing the one who was going to make fun of you has left," Nyx and Tic start laughing, then Nyx continues. "You're not old, and you're not alone. You have us, and we're not going anywhere."

"Yeah, you're our family. So stop with the fucked up self-pity." I pat his shoulder, and he nods because he knows we know he's only fucking with us. He does this once or twice a month with us, and Ares normally makes the jokes.

We leave the apartment, start our day, and hope we can get just one answer to the questions we have, just want one.