Mesmer, page 25
I’d wait for her to talk. Hannah had bruises all over her, purple, blue, red, and black ones, as well as internal pains I couldn’t check. A few small cuts needed stapling, so we did those, and Lina stapled my face wound. We cleaned up, found Hannah and me some clean clothes, and we dressed her. The cop drove us to where I’d parked my car. I took a second to sort out my thoughts then I explained that she would dispose of the twins and the girl’s body, clean up the house, repair the window, get rid of the twins’ BMW and belongings. Remove all hard evidence. Then keep an eye on the house for a month at least.
When she was ready, she would burn the place to the ground.
I wanted us long gone before then. I didn’t ask her for details. A cop should be able to figure out how to get rid of bodies untraceably. No one would come looking for the twins, or, hopefully, the girl. I left her all my weapons and tactical gear to get rid of, except for the pistol I hadn’t used.
I switched vehicles. I’d use my own Land Rover from here.
I drove a few miles, stopped by the side of the road, put the sim back in my cellphone, then phoned a collectable doctor who owned her own clinic. Jayne or Janine was her name. I never remembered them. She lived a hundred miles away. Once she knew we were coming, I drove off again.
Though I’d stuck by my promise and not messed with her mind, Hannah fell asleep clutching my belt.
I wrapped my fingers over hers and steered one-handed most of the way.
We met the doctor at her clinic where she let us in the side door then led us deeper inside. I told her I wanted us both fixed to the best of her ability, and that I wanted to know if Hannah would need further tests, then she set to work. Wounds were cleaned and restapled, and Hannah was thoroughly examined before the doctor sat down on a chair and looked up at me.
Blonde hair in a bun, she wore a nice, body-hugging navy dress—a woman who apparently was not flirting. That was unusual when a mesmer had you by the pussy, as we did with all our collectables.
I was ignoring any signals in any case. Hannah had given me practice at that, and incentive.
“You can talk. Say everything.” Just in case she had some roadblock about speaking.
My own staples had been redone, neatly, and I touched them as she inhaled and began.
“I can see she’s been sexually violated. The vaginal bruising, hematomas, and abrasions are extensive, but none of them are likely to cause future problems. I’ll give you samples of antibiotics you both need to take. I gave her a tetanus injection. Now, the minor wrist laceration is significant for different reasons. The main blood vessels and the tendons weren’t severed but the intention is obvious. The mental trauma is not something I can assess easily—”
“Just the physical.” I shot her a hard stare. “What about other internal damage? I don’t know…” I held up my hands. “Her liver, kidneys?”
“Without blood tests I can’t be sure, but unless this trauma involved poisoning or severe blows, those organs are likely to be fine. I see no symptoms pointing to any other conclusion. However, I would normally advise a thorough work-up for STDs—”
“Enough,” I snapped. “This isn’t a normal situation. Give us the drugs, tell us when to get these staples out, and we’ll be leaving.”
Hannah was going to be fine. My mind was doing a small, restrained dance. This, after the twins had assaulted her repeatedly for days. But as the doctor said, her mind was an issue.
A frightfully plaintive look on the female’s face told me she was hoping for something more personal from me. I shook my head. Not this time, not her.
We took everything and left without any sweet goodbyes or orgasms for the lonely and frustrated doc.
Once on the road, I tried again. “Still don’t want me to help you?”
“No. Not like you used to.” Then she stopped talking.
Quiet girl. Again, I let her be.
Five AM. The highway was getting busier. I was aiming for another house we mesmers used. A hotel concierge would take one look at my face and Hannah and call the cops. Two weeks to heal, and then I’d fly us out. There was no one on our tail for vengeance anymore.
Just me and my problems. Hannah and hers. Reconciling them was a big jigsaw which someone had taken to with flame, acid, and explosives.
“I want to talk to you. When you’re ready.” I glanced across.
A second later she released her seat belt and leaned across to me, laid her head on my lap. I clenched my jaw. The burn of the tires on the road was constant and mostly smooth. New tarmac, however… getting her to wrap her lips around my cock would be stupid, even if I made her. I stroked her head, felt her forehead wrinkle.
She placed her hand on my thigh, bad move. My cock jumped, and I sighed.
“I hurt so much.”
“I know babe. To be expected. Want to talk when we get to my house? It’s safe and cozy there. You can sleep now.”
“Sleep would be good. Not sure I can now. So quiet in here, though. Cars whooshing past. A few lights. And you. You’re warm.” She clutched the top half of my thigh and shivered. I heard a few sniffles. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. My fault anyway.” I lifted my hand from her hair and vaguely waved it. “Everything.”
“Mmm. Probably.” Her chuckle was pained. “You said no more secrets.”
Unease surfaced. “I may have. Okay, I did.”
“What did you mean by, not again?”
Crap. I did remember saying that. “When?”
“When… this.” She held up her bandaged wrist. “At the creek.”
“That. No more secrets?” I mused, softly. I had promised.
The dark highway thrummed beneath us. This seemed the worst ever time to tell her, but then again what if not telling her had made it happen again, somehow? I was done with lying to Hannah and concealing myself.
“Once upon a time you called me. You got my number, God knows how. From my parents, maybe. You had a boyfriend who’d been beating you, abusing you.” She couldn’t see my face, so I let my expression show my anger. “One night he tried to kill you, but instead you shot him.”
“What?”
“You shot him dead, and I was the only one you could think of who might help. I was pissed off that you had because I’d tried for years to stay away. And I was happy. It was a confusing beginning. I made you forget, and I kept you and then you made me want to tear loose from the brotherhood, so it could be only me and you.” I curled her hair over my finger, let it unroll and slide past. “Ever since that last day at school, I’ve thought I’d be the death of you. That I’d fuck you up if I let myself. I wanted you so badly and could see all this perverted shit I could do to my sweet girlfriend.”
She still had no idea, my angel. Bloodied wings and crawling to me. Would I ever lose that? No.
“That… doesn’t frighten me like it would’ve anymore. And killing an asshole boyfriend sounds fine to me. You need to give me back those memories.”
I grunted. “I will. Just not today, Okay?” She nodded. “I have two other secrets. The first, you’ll hate me for. That last school day I was new to being a mesmer, and the power is a compulsion, a monstrous thing. I don’t know any man it didn’t make bad.” Say it. I swallowed. “When I couldn’t have you, wouldn’t have you, I took your friend. Just that one night. Then I left town.”
“That was you?” Her head lifted. “Oh my God. All those years ago, that was you?”
I ran on with my tale. I didn’t want to dive into some big discussion over her friend. “Last secret. When I got to you, after I found your dead boyfriend, I found you in the bathtub, trying to bleed out from wrist cuts. Same as tonight, you didn’t cut deep enough.”
Which I figured meant she only wanted help and not to die.
“Oh. Oh shit. No. I did that before? Jesus.”
“Yes. You won’t be doing that again now, will you? Ever.”
The energy I needed to not fuck with her mind was enormous. I was proud I managed to do nothing.
“No. Like G— but, yeah, it’d be letting them win.” She’d paused then rephrased what she said, for some reason I couldn’t fathom. Her following silence was not something I cared to disturb. I let her be, just pleased she put her head back down on my thigh after a while and held me.
I was perhaps not totally rejected.
I’d come close to destroying her friend’s mind, from what I’d heard afterward, and she still had her head on my lap. What did that say about us?
We were living outside of normal. The real world was not for Hannah and Tomik.
Her silence remained until after we arrived at the new house, a place on the outskirts of Lutsen, Minnesota. This was a big whimsical Victorian with white turrets and stained-glass windows. She looked up at those turrets and seemed interested as I unlocked the front door. Curiosity was a good sign.
I ordered a ton of takeout food for delivery, answered the door with a hood over my face, then brought it to the master bedroom upstairs where I’d installed us both.
The floral-and-white quilt my beautiful Hannah girl lay on looked so cheerful. It made me halt as if slapped. The contrast rocked me in a way that something insignificant should not, but it seemed absurdly wrong after our night of death, of me slamming a massive hammer down on a man I hated.
Life goes on.
“Breakfast in bed,” I announced quietly. Anything in bed, really. For her. Champagne, caviar, the head of a horse, a ballet company… Okay, I was exaggerating but, yeah, anything. I owed her.
“The twins. They’re really dead?”
“So dead. So very dead. In fact, I stayed too long killing them when I should’ve been finding you.”
I put the tray on a side table, sat on the edge of the bed, and reached over to squeeze her hand. I combed my fingers through her damp hair. She’d had me watch while she showered, cleaned herself of their smells, of every molecule of their existence. I knew why, having done the same. Their blood had been under my nails.
Hannah was scared to be alone, and she’d picked me to be her guard while she showered.
That had brought prickles of sad triumph to my eyes.
She trusted me? Dumb-fuck thing to do.
The next morning, I came clean about having to leave her once she was well.
It was for the best.
She clammed up after that, and I barely heard more than twenty words a day.
I didn’t push her to talk, though I stayed close. Healing took time, especially when I couldn’t do my special style of brain surgery. I’d tried that before and failed, I reminded myself. Maybe she was right.
No, she was right.
Even so, we spent hours together. She curled up mostly on my lap while we binge-watched the latest series on the widescreen TV or played Scrabble—for some reason the house had the game—or read books together outside by the empty pool.
I discovered touch without sex: the heat of her body against mine, the subtle shift of her curves, her oh so feminine weight when she stretched across the bed to read and used me as a belly-rest, and the sea-shell whorls of her ear that I found hiding under her hair.
I also discovered I could still cook bacon and eggs, and Hannah was the queen of burned chocolate fudge.
All this was almost new to me because I hadn’t paused much in my frenetic, nasty living for years to simply appreciate companionship and friendship. Nothing would ever untangle her sexuality from what I saw in Hannah, but this, it blossomed into a beautiful thing.
We had a world for a few days where nothing outside of us mattered.
It let both of us breathe. Though I had my own despair, I watched her cry to herself while I stroked her, or in bed when she woke restless. I sometimes took myself to another room where I could sit alone, wrap my hands over my head, and scream silently. Lust. Despair. The need to do evil to others just to watch them writhe. None of these were gone, they only lay beneath the floorboards of my mind, plotting, fuming, waiting to wrest control from me.
Being a monster when the entrance fee for being Hannah’s lover was not being one… how could I not scream?
On our third morning, breakfast in bed again, Hannah cleared her throat and spoke.
“No more secrets, right? You said that I tried to suicide once before this. You messed up my friend from school. Those were your last secrets?”
“There are no more.” I shook my head.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the suicide? Or that I killed my boyfriend, whose name I think I remember was Craig?”
“I guess, even though I hated you for coming to me, I wanted to protect you too.” I shrugged. “I was stupid about you from the start.”
“I see.” She sat up cross-legged and peered at the food arrayed on the small bedside table, picked up a fork and a plate. “That looks so yummy. I’m hungry. More than yesterday.”
“Then eat.” I smiled. Watching her eat was strangely peaceful. It said she was healing.
Carefully, Hannah placed the empty plate on the bed, left the fork on it with a clink of metal on china.
“I have a secret for you. One I think it’s time for me to tell. You haven’t asked me about Greta. Do you remember I mentioned her?” The fork slid from the plate to the bed as she swiveled in place, looking sexy in the white and tiny-red-hearts underwear I’d found. Aging bruises marched across her legs and stomach. Under the soft bra, her breasts were a mass of splotches.
Though she’d taken her dose of painkillers, Hannah was tough—tougher than I’d let her be for a long while. Instead I’d tried to force her to be what I wanted.
But that underwear… I could see the lips of her pussy through the panties.
Most of our houses could’ve doubled as sex or lingerie stores, we had that much packed away, waiting for any mesmer who dropped by with a collectable he’d found and wanted to fuck. Some us still appreciated lingerie. I stifled my desires and lifted my gaze to her face.
“Greta?” I frowned. “You said that name at the creek. I figured that was because you were stressed and a little crazy. Sorry. Bad word, but still.”
“Crazy? No. At least I don’t think I imagined her. She’s a girl in my head but sometimes she comes out and walks around. Sometimes she does things that seem real. It’s been difficult for me to be sure. Or it was, until the night you rescued me and Mitchell shot Roman.”
An imaginary girl in her mind. “She’s not real, Hannah. You’ve gone through traumas that’d drive anyone to have imaginary friends.”
“Stop!” She held up her palm. “Don’t patronize me. She’s listing things right now.” Her eyes flicked upward for a second. “Remember the church when someone poisoned a bottle of vodka?”
I nodded. A realization dawned that something odd might be about to happen. Like someone scratching at the inside of my head and begging to be allowed in. I’d been reading too much fucking Stephen King.
“And the writing on my stomach? She did that. That’s how you found me, correct?”
Fuck. “I saw you write that… sort of.” Her hand had moved as if fast forwarded. The letters had been so very precise, even if some were missing. I’d wondered if the recording was tampered with. Imaginary girls should stay imaginary.
“Sort of.” Hannah smirked. “We both know you saw something odd.”
I was not going to ask if the both was me and Hannah or Hannah and Greta. “I did see something odd, yes.”
“And when Mitchell shot Roman? What did you see? Because that too was Greta. She did something to Mitchell. She doesn’t understand how she did it, but she shocked him. She hit him with her fist, in the side and the arm holding the gun, and I saw him jerk. Then he shot Roman.”
“And I thought mesmers were weird. I figured he’d had a heart attack.” I rested my back against the headboard and rubbed the crease between my eyebrows. “So, have her do something. Prove she exists. What does she look like?”
If she exists then what is she? A part of Hannah or some other creepy if helpful being?
“She looks like a throwback punk rocker with a biker chick aesthetic.” Hannah grinned. “And she’s blowing raspberries at me for that. She’s everything I’m not. Tougher, a rebel, and she’s brought me back from the edge of the cliff so many times.”
I think I had her figured. Hannah had that multiple personality disorder.
That did not explain how she did things in the real world. The vodka incident made me wonder if this simply let Hannah bypass the mesmer commands, sometimes. She hadn’t been tied down that day, just told to stay. And Mitchell? That was filed under what-the-fuck land. I had no answers there.
“You’re thinking this through aren’t you Tomik? I can see it.” She pulled her ankles in closer, which only drew my eyes to her panties and what lay between her legs.
“Stop doing that. I haven’t stopped wanting to fuck you since we came here.” And since before that. Never ever had I stopped. Hah, I did have another disgusting secret.
She frowned. “Is that so awful?”
We were off the imaginary girl topic and onto the other one I needed to talk about. Me, the bad guy. Now she was feeling better she’d also be feeling the attraction between us. It would never go away. But I had to leave and reminding her of that was sensible. I wasn’t going to run away without notice.
“It is. I have to go, soon. I told you that once you’re healed, I’m going far away from you.”
“Tomik.” Her mouth quivered, and she adjusted her lotus position again, while looking at the bed. “Why? I trust you. There is no one else I can say that about.”
“How can you possibly trust me?”
“Shit!” She punched the quilt. “You came for me, rescued me from them. Without you I’d be dead! Why wouldn’t I? Are you stupid?”
I pursed my lips and let out a long sigh, wanting to smack her for her own stupidity. “I’m a mesmer. I will never ever be safe to be around. Okay, here’s my other last final secret. The one I’m so ashamed of I even forgot it for a while.”
Hannah grimaced. “What is it?”
“All those filthy torture porn videos they sent me? Every single one made me get a hard-on and want to be there with them, doing to you what they were doing, joining in.”
