Chapter 4
Thea
There was chocolate. Peanut M&Ms, to be exact. Chocolate was one of those things that I had to be in the mood for, but a night of beating someone up usually had me craving something sweet. Maybe it was my version of self-care.
I was munching away and lounging in a rather uncomfortable chair, Jude was snacking on chips and playing on his phone, and Dexter was on the phone with Toby.
He was describing, in detail, Rick’s beating (although he kept Rick’s name out of it).
He occasionally stopped to answer questions Toby must have had, occasionally asking me things, too.
“Hey, Thea, how long are your nails?” and “Do you get them done, or are they natural?”
I guess Toby really cared about details. I mean, did it matter if I had fake nails or not when I was scratching someone’s skin off? I didn’t know, seeing as I wasn’t the type to get fake nails.
I had nothing against them. I’d gotten a gel manicure a time or two, and they looked really nice, as long as they weren’t dagger nails. No offense to ladies who rocked that look, but it just wasn’t me.
I liked nice nails. My problem was that I had zero patience for sitting there unable to use my hands for like an entire hour.
It was its own special kind of torture. I could deal with pedicures.
I could read a book, or get some research done, or whatever, but manicures?
I was just supposed to sit there and make small talk with some total stranger who was doing my nails?
No, thanks. I was not that social. Or that patient.
Rick groaned, his head rolled forward on his chest, and I popped the last peanut M&M into my mouth, crumpling the package up. I looked around for a moment, wondering what to do with it, and then I shoved it into my pocket. I guess I shouldn’t leave evidence around.
Jude must have sensed I was ready to move it along, because he folded up his chip bag and waved his hand at Dexter, who actually made kissy sounds into the phone—I fucking kid you not—before getting off the phone with Toby.
They went and stood behind the chair that held Rick, folding their arms across their chests.
It was very biker gang looking. I kinda felt like I should be wearing leathers or something, but here I was, in sweatpants and a t-shirt.
I so wasn’t up for the same vibe as the Smith brothers. They didn’t seem to mind, though.
I walked in front of Rick and snapped my fingers in front of his face. He flinched back, whimpering.
Such a wimp.
“What’s gonna happen to the cutie you were with?” I asked.
He mumbled and blubbered a bit, spit and snot sliding down his face. I kneeled down in front of him, and I could see that his face was already bruised. I guess I had hit him pretty hard—one eye was darkening and swelling, his lip was swollen, and his eyes were bloodshot.
He finally made eye contact with me, and his eyes skittered away from mine quickly. I didn’t really feel like touching him again, but I didn’t see a way around it.
I grabbed his face, making his eyes meet mine. “Ricky boy, what is your friend gonna do with the cutie you’re dating? What were you guys gonna do?”
“Nothing!” he insisted.
“We both know that isn’t true, so you can either tell me, and I can go deal with your friend, or I can beat it out of you. Your choice, Ricky. What do you think?”
I wasn’t surprised when he started blubbering again, tears leaking from his eyes.
I could hardly make out what he was saying, but I caught something about the cutie talking about how he’d always wanted a threesome, something about wanting to get DP’d.
There was a lot of protesting and “we weren’t gonna hurt him” and all sorts of shit like that, but they’d been plying the guy with drinks, for fuck’s sake.
I looked at Dexter and Jude, but Jude was already on his phone—he put it on speakerphone.
I could hear it ringing, then Liam’s voice as he picked up.
Jude filled him in, Liam did some typing and apparently hacking into cameras, confirmed that the cutie who had walked in with Rick left on his own—apparently he was wise enough to not trust the friend.
Liam promised to look into the friend that Rick had arrived with as well, although he didn’t sense that the guy was rotten, which we could all confirm. Sleazy did not equal hellbound.
Ok, then. That was sort of anticlimactic. I was hoping to go kick some more ass.
We all turned and looked at Rick. He was still crying and blubbering, not really paying any attention to us, and Liam was still on the phone, clicking away on his computer.
“You wanna wipe him? We gotta call Corbin if so,” Jude said.
“He didn’t see anything. It’s not like she went all fiery on him or anything,” Dexter added.
“You’re all clear on this end. If he decides to go to the authorities, nothing will come of it. I think he’s probably wiser than that, though,” Liam announced through the phone.
“Yeah, we could probably just cut him loose,” Jude said.
“Why?” I asked.
“You wanna beat him up some more?” Dexter asked, looking at his phone. “Toby will never go to bed if I don’t get home and drag him away from his computer, but I could spare a few more hours.”
“I’m free, and I’ve got more snacks,” Jude added.
Some clacking, and then Liam said through the phone, “He won’t be missed until his shift, although I could easily call him out of work.”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I mean why cut him loose at all?”
Jude and Dexter both looked at me, tilting their heads. Even the phone was quiet, no clacking of keys.
“I mean, I guess it isn’t technically killing him if we leave him tied up here to starve to death. Toby has been wondering how long that would take,” Dexter said.
Jude snorted. “I think that technically still counts as killing someone.”
Liam’s voice chimed in, “Plus, Q is always telling me how important consent is.”
Both Dexter and Jude nodded at that, looking somewhat relieved and acting like that made perfect sense.
“Consent?” I asked.
“Yup!” Dexter answered. “Like you can’t have video cameras in someone’s house to watch them.”
“Unless they consent,” Liam chimed in. “Then it’s okay.”
I looked back and forth between them. They all seemed serious.
“Just so everyone knows, I do not consent to having video cameras anywhere in my home watching me,” I pointed out, because apparently it was important to set that boundary.
I heard Liam start clacking away on the computer, Jude rubbed the back of his neck, and Dexter looked off to the side. I cleared my throat.
“The grounds aren’t technically the house,” Jude said.
I sighed.
“And listening devices in public spaces are for the protection of everyone,” Liam added through the phone. “And they’re not technically cameras.”
Motherfuckers.
Luckily for Liam, Rick groaned again.
“Okay, we’re off track here. I still don’t get it. What, you want me to get Rick’s consent to kill him?” I might have asked that a little loudly, because Rick moaned and started crying again.
The guys thought that was funny, though, because they all had a good chuckle.
“No. We mean Josh,” Liam finally answered.
“It’s important to get consent if you’re going to kill his ex.
Aside from that, though, we can’t kill his ex.
It’s physically impossible. We’re actually unable to kill souls that aren’t hellbound if we aren’t protecting ourselves or others from death.
So, more torture, wipe him, or cut him loose? ”
I still didn’t get it, but I finally muttered, “Cut him loose.”
Jude and Dexter got to work then. We all said goodbye to Liam, who promised to cover our tracks.
They literally cut Rick loose, and Dexter knocked him out.
He actually whistled as he draped the guy over his shoulder and hauled him out to his car.
He’d offered to let me drop him off somewhere if I wanted to, but I was done with the night.
They cleaned up the cabin, and I barely had to do a thing with their hellhound flames all whooshing through the blood and stuff.
It was all nicely taken care of. No muss, no fuss.
They really knew how to spoil someone, and despite the fact that they were pretty clueless sometimes, I was glad they were my sort-of-brothers.
Dexter cheerily waved goodbye as he drove off with Rick, and I sat for a minute in my car, Jude in the passenger seat.
“It’s sort of strange when it’s done, isn’t it?” Jude mused. “I don’t think the other guys really get it, because they weren’t raised human. I mean, Corbin was, but not totally. I don’t think it hits the same way, even for him.”
I looked over at him. He was looking out the front window at the cabin, his face thoughtful.
“Did you think you were a psychopath growing up?” I asked.
Jude shrugged. “I knew I wasn’t like everyone else. I knew there was something wrong with me. Something inside of me that wasn’t like everyone else.”
I breathed out, looking at the cabin, too. Yes, that was exactly it. That feeling of… wrong. We’d grown up feeling wrong somehow. Feeling like there was something inside us that shouldn’t be there.
“It was easy to pretend most of the time. I could seem just like everyone else. It’s still easy to pretend, just in different ways.” He looked over at me. “It’s the transitions that are the hardest.”
I nodded my head. Yes. It was like we were always hiding, then sometimes we got to be ourselves, like in the cabin. Then we went back to being the other selves that the world knew.
It was hard to let the freedom of being our true selves go, but it was also hard to be that naked and vulnerable for too long. Our true selves weren’t used to being let out for long.
Jude put a hand on my shoulder. “Transitions are the hardest part, but being with pack helps. They let us be a little bit of both. Let’s go home and wake everyone up. We’ll bring ice cream. They won’t mind getting up if we come with ice cream.”
I laughed, because it was such a Jude thing to do. It also made me understand him a little bit better. Maybe he wasn’t just the goof ball I thought he was. Besides, I needed to have a conversation with Josh.
The guys were right. Consent was important.