9. Nitro

NINE

NITRO

I shut the door to my bedroom, everyone went straight to their rooms. We have three hours before we get up to go to work, and the only thing I can think about is her.

That thought is quickly overtaken the moment I shut my eyes, and feel them on me. I feel their hands, I feel their breath, I hear their whispers.

"This one is special, he's been special from the start. He was given to us, can't wait to hear him scream." The man's voice echoes in my ear. "I've heard he screams."

I don't know any other life than this one, it feels like this is the life I was born into. Why would God give me this life, why would he want to hurt me, what did I do?

I keep my eyes shut, not wanting to see the new people wanting to hurt me. I have enough of their faces memorised in my head, I don't need to add more.

I hear the thunder of the torch flame.

I open my eyes and quickly sit up in bed, not wanting to live through hell again. Sitting on the edge of the bed I look out the window, the day has begun and I've not slept again. I know the second I close my eyes the devil will come out to play.

I grab the lighter off my bedside table, take my t-shirt off, and lie back down. Flicking the lighter on, watching the flame spark dancing in front of me is the only thing that brings me calm.

Bringing the flame down to my chest, feeling the burning of the flame on my skin is the thing that I crave. My skin erupts from the fire lingering on my chest. Pulling the flame away, I give my skin a moment's grace from the sensation I crave more than I should. Once I feel the coldness on my skin, I bring the flame back to my chest, gripping the sheets knowing this time it will hurt more, because I'm not stopping until I feel like I've burned the devil to rest for the day.

I still remember the words they whispered in my ears, when they had their fun with me. ‘You're not strong enough to stand in the storm and win.' They were right. I didn't win, but now I'm controlling the storm and it's going to rush through them like nothing they've seen before.

They thought they were the devil who came to lock us away, and made sure they fucked us up enough to never be able to forget, they tried to kill me and my brothers, but we fought and we made sure we never forgot what they did.

We have one thing they don't. The darkness. The darkness is where all the devil's power lies. We were thrown to the pit, and then we were reborn with the devil within us.

Like our tattoo says, Don't be scared of the dark, be scared of what you can't see in it. The ghosts were born, and we live in the dark, like how they kept us, now we crave the dark.

They will burn in the fire I throw them in and watch them scream in pain.

I click off the lighter and throw it on the bed, as I let the burning feeling hit my skin.

I stare up at the ceiling wanting to let the pain go deeper into my veins. I need to feel the fire moving through my body so I remember what they did to me.

You can never forget what they did, no matter how much you like to torture yourself.

I look at the clock on the wall, an hour. One hour and my day begins. Grabbing my t-shirt, I go downstairs.

I chuckle to myself when I see the kitchen light is on. Seems like my brothers all have the same idea as me. Well all but one, Ares, who hasn't seen his girl in more than twenty-fours, we won't be seeing him until he has to go into the shop.

"You okay?" Nyx asks, pointing to my stomach.

"Are we ever okay?" I ask, grabbing a beer from the middle of the table, and joining them at the table. Rolling up a joint, noting Nyx nor Tic have answered my question.

It's amazing how we function on so little sleep. Beer, joints, cigarettes, and food keep us going until one night, no matter what, our eyes will close for the night and no matter what, we burn in our sleep.

"What time is your first client?" Nyx asks

"Eight in the fucking morning. Why do we do it? I mean we own the fucking place we shouldn't take anyone before midday." I moan making both of them laugh at me, it's not the first time I've mentioned this. We don't sleep yet we wake up early to tattoo people. Ares and Tic are on the same page, and agreed not to open so early, yet Nyx is all business. I got the wrong brother with me.

"You didn't have to book them in at eight, you could have lied and said you're booked u.," Nyx continues to laugh, and I tell him to fuck off, which only makes both of them laugh more.

"And I will next time," I take in a long drag of my joint, and lean back into the chair.

I turn to the stairs, when I hear someone coming down the stairs. "Even she wasn't good enough to tire you out-"

"How about you shut the hell up," Ares cuts me off walking over to the table, and I can't help but smile at him. "The notepad, I've finally finished it today, and I wanted to talk about it, but if you're not interested then I'm happy to go back upstairs." Ares pulls a chair out and sits down, lighting up a cigarette. "One day the four of us are going to sleep a full four hours."

"Yeah, when...we... we're dead," Tic jokes, and I agree with him.

"So what did you find?" Nyx asks.

"The first book is the agreement, most of its bloody code which is going to take time to figure out what each thing means but I have a notepad where I'm writing things down." Ares puts his pad on the table and Nyx is the one to pick it up, to see what code he's broken. "Plutus, from what I'm guessing is Esha's family. She's told me everything about her family to her great grandad, and if I look at the family line it links them. So I'm colour coding everything with her family." Nyx hands me the pad, and I look through what he's got. "They agreed to a bidding every three months. I'll see if they're still doing it, but long story short. They all signed in blood so that no one would know who they are, the identity of each family would die with them. If one got caught, they were not allowed to mention the others, if they did then their whole family would die. My money is they didn't know about any of these notepads." Ares points to the pads and smokes his cigarette while Nyx and I look through the pad.

"So we still have nothing?" I ask. "There isn't anything new to what we know already."

Ares' lips curl into a smile, a smile we all know too well. "My brother, you have so little faith in me. I've read a few of the pads now, well four, but I have found some numbers. I have no fucking idea what they mean , but I have a few ideas, which Nyx can play around with. Coordination is what I'm thinking, as the numbers are too weird to be a phone number, but then again almost seventy years ago phone numbers could have looked like that." Ares opens the pages of the notepad then slides it over to us, and the three of us have a look at it.

"Seventy? I thought you said one of them was sixty years ago," I ask him, also trying to figure out what the numbers could be.

"That was only one pad I looked through, this is the first one, there isn't anything that dates before this one, and this is almost seventy years ago." Ares leans forward, and taps his finger on the top of the page for us to look at the date. Ares reads a pad and it seems to go back more and more. What will the others have in them.

"This shit has been going on for seventy years." Nyx shakes his head, and leans back in his seat, and I look through the notepad, I mean it will mean nothing to me, as Ares and Nyx are the ones who are working through this. I would be throwing them across the room by now, because it's not giving us anything new.

"How many people do you think they've killed over the years?" I ask, also thinking how lucky we are to have escaped them. But were we lucky? Did we really escape them?

"The real question is, how many people have we killed because they were rapists, or killers and they turned out that way because of what they did to them." Ares has a point, if we didn't have each other would we have been like them? If we didn't have revenge for those who took us, played us like we were nothing but toys, would we be so different?

"I'll put the numbers into the system and let it run to see if it gets a hit on a phone number or coordination's to a location. But for now, we have to be normal business men." Nyx is the first to leave the table, and I turn to Tic who is staring at both Ares and me.

"You good Tic?" I ask him.

"So...so many people...murdered, but...but we've saved...saved...so many kids." Tic puts the pad down, pushes it over to us.

Without another word he leaves the table, and Ares and I sit there drinking our beer, and smoke out joint.

"You want to go to the cinema at the weekend?" Ares asks, and I have to let out a small chuckle.

With everything that's happening around us, it's good to have a normal conversation like brothers would. Not talking about the past, or the next person we're going to kill. Just planning our weekend, and as crazy as it is, it's nice to have conversations like this. It almost makes me feel normal.

"Is Esha coming too?" I ask.

I thought, with him having a girl he would be spending all his time with her, but he doesn't. Now I'm not saying he ignores her because he doesn't, not even for a second, and if we're out anyone even looks her way he will kill them. But the amount of time he spends with us, you'd think he'd take her away for a weekend or something. Have some time to themselves, but no, and there is a part of me which isn't even surprised about it.

"You want her to come, she'll come, if not then she won't," Ares replies.

"You know we love her like a sister, so if she wants to come, let her." Esha fitted in well with the four of us.

She knows everything and knows we're a tight family. She doesn't get in the way of Ghost work, she laughs and jokes with us, and she has hit it off with Tic, which is always the worry.

"I'll ask her. My head is fucking killing me," Ares slaps his head a few times, then smokes the last of my joint. "I've been thinking about that Emily chick-" my head snaps over to Ares wondering what he's been thinking. "-Not in that way, I'm happy with the woman I have in my bed. Been thinking, if what she's saying is true, why has her life been erased, why is she important enough to delete."

"I think that's the question we're all asking," I lean forward, sliding the notepad on the table from one hand to the other. "I have a feeling the people that want her dead have been looking for her, and she's been off the radar." I face Ares who nods his head agreeing with me.

"We have the guy in the warehouse, I think after spending the day in that fucked up place, we might get some answers." Ares looks at his watch, before looking back up at me. "I have a bike coming in from Scotland, the man wants it fixed up in the day so he can ride it back up. It's going to be a long fucking day."

"I'm fully booked up too. First one comes in thirty minutes, then the last one is at seven." I walk over to the kitchen to get the coffee machine on for us both, leaning on the counter I turn to face Ares. "I need to work on my days better," I laugh which makes Ares laugh too.

"I still have a fucking Pilates room to make up there, need to set some time to do it," He tells me. That man won't admit he loves Esha but he will give her the goddamn world to make her smile.

"The four of us will have that set up quickly, once we have a second in our life," I walk back over with coffee for us both, and see Tic walking out of his bedroom over to Nyx's room. "Plus you really want to be knocking the roof off in this weather? It's raining most of the time."

"True, right I better get in the shower and wake up for the day, because coffee isn't going to do it." Ares gets up, but before walking away he looks at me. "Keep your focus away from this Emily girl, at least until we know what's happening. If anyone deserves to have some sort of happiness it's my brothers."

I don't say anything because I can't promise I can stay away from her. All I can think about at the moment is kissing her, just to feel her lips on mine. This is not going to turn out well for me.

It was a long fucking day, mostly because I need to sleep. My day was full of clients. Now I'm sitting in the room above the pub waiting for Wesley and Emily to come. Wesley called to say he will on the way, and told Owen they would be coming through the back door.

Owen's a good man, he knows when Wesley needs the room, no one can come into the room, so we don't have to worry about anyone coming in.

We have the guy from Emily's apartment, and my brothers are with him now to try and finally get some answers.I wanted to be there too, but she asked for me so I'm here.

Smoking the last of my cigarette, I turn to the door pulling my mask over my face and see her walking through the door. She looks tired, she looks lost, and I'm fighting myself not to walk over to her and wrap my arms around her to tell her it's going to be okay.

"So, this is your new home, one of us will bring you food, the four of them will talk through that themselves. The room is clean, and there is hot water so nothing to worry about. The bedroom is just through there." Wesley points to the bedroom, and she takes her bag off him and walks over to me.

"You came," she whispers.

"You asked," I reply. She walks away to the bedroom, and I walk over to Wesley. "You find anything?" I ask him.

"I took her prints, nothing. Someone doesn't want her found, but why? She knows nothing, so she says." Wesley looks over to the bedroom, then turns back to me. "I think she knows something, but she's put it so far back in her head, even she's forgotten about it. Maybe the day her sister was taken, or maybe the accident her parents were in."

"If she was in the car when her parents died, there must be a doctor, or a report somewhere right?" I ask him, and he nods agreeing with me. "I'll see if I can find out where her parents' accident happened, then see what we can find out."

"Keep me updated, and I'll let you know if I find anything. Do I want to know where your brothers are?" He smiles, and I don't say anything to him, because sometimes it's best for him not to know. "Right, I'm off, I have a case to close." He pats my arm and leaves, as I turn around to see Emily standing in the doorway to the bedroom, in a loose hoodie and black skinny jeans.

"Do you want anything to eat?" I ask. Walking back to the couch, and sitting down.

"No, Wesley got me dinner on the way here." She sits on the couch next to me. "Can I have one?" She points to the beers on the table.

"Sure." I hand her one, and bring my bandana up to my lower lip, and lift my mask up a little, so I can drink.

"Hav, have you found anything?" she asks, I turn to face her picking at the sticker on the beer bottle. I have no idea how to tell her she's nowhere to be seen.

"Have you been moving around?" I ask her.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean did you always live in this area?"

"No." She stops talking when I lean forward, grabbing the paper and pen, and handing them over to her.

"Write down every place you've lived, even if it was only for a day. Write where the accident happened as well. Were you in the accident?"

She stays quiet, as if something in her head is trying to remember something or fighting to hide the memory of the day.

"I don't...remember," she looks me in the eyes. "Everything from the accident I don't remember anything," she wipes the tears away from her cheeks. "I thought I was crazy, forgotten the accident, but that night I don't remember anything," she tells me, handing me the paper of where she's lived. I can look up if there are any reports in the area, or even a doctor I can find and talk to. I look through the list, then bring my lighter to it, and burn it. "You don't-"

"I have a very good memory," I cut her off. I don't turn to face her again. It's enough I have to listen to her soft sexy voice, the last thing I need is to see how pretty she is too.

I see movement coming from her direction, I glance over to see her rolling the sleeves of her hoodie up, and I quickly get up and walk to the kitchen.

She's got tattoos on her arms, fucking hell. My weak spot, and my dick is jumping in my pants to be let loose. I've always had a thing for woman with tattoos, and so far she's getting my attention in more ways than I need. ‘Come on focus, you can't touch her!' I shout to myself.

I grab the burner phone and throw it over to her. "Call your boss, tell him you quit, make some excuse. We don't need him calling the police worried about you," I tell her.

She nods, puts the phone to ear, and I turn back around so I'm not looking at the black ink on her skin. I close my eyes for a moment while she talks on the phone, trying to think about anything but her, anything but how sexy her lips look, or how much my dick is craving them to be around it.

"Done." I hear her behind me, and I nod still not looking at her. "Do I need money-"

"Not while you're here, your food and the rent for this place is paid for," I tell her. If we're protecting someone, then we pay for everything because we don't want the police knowing who we have; and our money is protected very well thanks to Nyx and his computer skills.

"Hey, White Eyes," she calls and I finally turn around to face her. "Do I get a name, or is it still White Eyes?" she asks. "I'd like to know who to thank once this is all finished."

"White Eyes is fine." No names, she can't find out who we are. "Are you not scared of me?" I ask.

All the people we've met take one look at us, and the fear in their eyes is enough to make me smile. The first time we saw her, she was scared, you could smell the fear from her, but now she seems comfortable.

"Your brothers scare me, but you seem to be the only one who wants to save me. I feel like you wouldn't hurt me." She shifts her position on the couch, and the only thing I can think about is how much I do want to hurt her. How much I want to make her cry while I'm so deep inside her, and how I want her screaming for me.

I light up another cigarette, letting the smoke settle into my lungs for a moment, not saying anything to her, but I watch her watching me. Her eyes glance over my face, before coming back to my eyes.

"What colour are your eyes?" she asks.

"White," I reply, the less she knows about me the better. Well, that's what I keep telling myself.

She smiles, she shouldn't be doing that, she should be annoyed. "Is this your full-time job?" Now that's a question, because it might as well be. We make more money being the ghosts, then we do owning the businesses.

"No," I reply, and then take a drag, before walking over to the table to grab another beer.

"Can you tell me anything about you? Please. I'm going to be in this place, alone, give me something," she pleads, and I stay quiet for a moment thinking what can I tell her which won't reveal too much about me.

I'm blank. I have no idea what to tell her about me. Do I tell her we live over the road, do I tell her about our past, or about the demons. I have nothing.

"Do your parents know you do this?" That I can answer.

"I don't know who my parents are." Her eyes widen then she takes a sip of her beer. It's the only question I've ever wanted answered. Who are my parents? "My life is not a rainbow full of colour, it's a storm full of darkness, and pain," I tell her. She wants to know about me, there is nothing good to say.

She places her beer on the table, and walks over to me, standing an arms length away from me.

"If you were full of darkness, you would never have helped me, you wouldn't have fought your brothers to protect me." She takes a small step forward, and places her hand on my chest. "There is something in there that's pure enough to see someone needs help." I take a deep drag, and let the smoke escape my nose, then curl my lips into a smile.

"I kill not just men, but women too, and I do it with a smile. I don't lose any sleep over it. No one with a heart can do that." I feel her hand tense up on my chest, and she closes her eyes, and my heart begins to pound against my chest harder.

"The beating I feel against my hand-"

"Stop, little tiger, I'm a man with more darkness around them, than you've ever seen in your life." I place my hand on hers, and remove it from my chest. She takes a quick step forward towards me. She smells like cinnamon, I go to push her away, but she holds her ground.

She brings her free hand up to my face, and places her finger to my lips. "I just wanted to make sure you're real, and not some fucked up computer freak," she whispers softly, as I watch her eyes moving to my lips, and she continues to softly trace them.

She leans in closer to me, and I know I should be pushing her away, I know I should stop this, but yet I want this, I want to taste her.

Before she can make the move, my hand is on the back of her neck pulling her closer to me, and I kiss her. I kiss her beautiful lips, which taste of beer and honey. Her lips are sweet, warm, and they're consuming my whole body, and in that second her body is pressed against mine. I've forgotten where I am, who I am, because this woman is making me forget, even if it's just for a moment.

I pull her away from me when my phone rings, but I don't answer it straight away.

"That shouldn't have happened," I tell her, and take a step back from me, licking her lips.

"I'm sorry," she whispers and walks away from me, and I answer the call from Nyx.

What the fuck did I just do, because now I've tasted her, I want more.