Chapter 3
Kadir huffed loudly as she came to.
“What?” She asked darkly, eyes still closed.
“What happened today?” Her brother asked seriously. “You were so excited when you left this morning, so I thought I’d drop by the bank. So why did I get a call that you were seizing on the floor?”
“I had a panic attack.” She said flatly, before praying silently and opening her eyes.
Relief coursed through her when she saw that she was in her bedroom at home. Her eyes were working again.
“I could tell. The closer I got to you, the more I felt it. Your power was whirling out of control like a vortex. . .” He watched her as she sat up and threw aside the covers.
She was in her oversized PJ shirt and underwear. He must have changed her when she got home.
“Sascha is pregnant.” She said plainly. He took a deep breath, to either say something or sigh. “With four babies.”
Kadir sat up straight at this. “Four babies?” He shook his head in disbelief. “How is that possible?”
“It happened when she went on her trip. . .” She said quietly. The silence that followed was deafening.
“No. . .” was all Kadir managed to choke out. He’d been there when she’d pulled that night. And he’d been the one to wake her up from the nightmares the following night. . .
Janice had never experienced such pain, such helplessness as she had that night when she dreamed of being raped by four men, each face changing to another, until it settled on a fifth.
. . The fifth man raped her in a hotel hallway with the features of a monster.
She’d woken up with large running scratches that had plagued her for the next two weeks.
Her brother had had to treat the ones on her back and they’d had to care for them as though she’d been in an accident because they refused to close and start healing until the second week.
It had been a terrible ordeal, but at the time, they’d thought she was just being psychically attacked. Now, Janice wasn’t so sure.
“What happened?” His voice was hushed and tense.
“I don’t know. I didn’t get to ask. . .” She sighed heavily, throwing her legs over the side of the bed and testing her weight on her feet. “But whatever it was, it was bad. . .”
Kadir was silent a long time before heaving a slow sigh and pushing a hand through his dark, thick mane of hair.
He really was a handsome devil for a monster.
. . but she supposed, he’d argue the same of her.
“Alright. I’ll start dropping by the bank to check on you both.
Let me know what she says when you get the chance to talk to her.
If she was raped by monsters, we need to figure out how we’re going to handle it. ”
Janice nodded slightly. “Monte. . .” She murmured softly. “Whatever we do. . . I don’t want to get caught again.”
“Bet—”
“I can’t. . .” she stressed, looking at him with heartbreaking eyes. “Get caught again.”
Kadir looked down at the floor flexing and fisting his hand in turn. “I won’t let that happen.”
They were silent for a long time, letting their history fill the air.
They were on the run. Had been for a long time now.
And they’d been through a lot before they had managed to find the abandoned little cabin in the woods they now called home.
They’d fixed it up, of course. Outfitted it with indoor plumbing and a septic tank.
Now they’d been here for ten years and pretty much owned the land because no one ever came to claim it. . .
They were happy here.
They shared one long meaningful look. At least, they were happy as they could be.
They looked out for each other. Protected each other. Kept each other’s secrets. Nursed each other when sick and kept track of one another when out of control to their other mind. . . their monster mind.
Kadir sighed and dragged a hand down his face. “So what are you going to do about your power tonight? You need to let it out before it seizes control.”
Janice looked at her ruby red painted toes. She needed to go out tonight. . . needed to move. She didn’t know why or how exactly, but she needed movement. And a lot of it.
“Do you want to bleed it?” He asked, studying her.
She took a deep breath and shook her head lightly. “No. I need to move. It’s built up too much and I’m still tender from the last time.” She scrubbed her eyes in frustration. “It’s getting worse again. It keeps building and it’s growing more out of my control again.”
Kadir took a moment, moving thoughtfully to her dresser with its mirror and drapes pulled open.
He picked up her brush and ran a hand over it.
“So then, do you want to fight? Or we could do target practice.” He suggested, his eyes an icy pale blue surrounded by the frigid blue of a deep ocean trench.
His monster was close. He’d need to run it in the next few days. Meaning she’d need to keep a decent reserve of her power to corral him.
“No. If I deplete my reserves too much, I won’t be able to keep up with you.”
“So what then?” He set down the brush and began rolling the hair he collected into a ball.
She thought for a minute. “Maybe dancing and a street fight.”
He eyed her in the mirror, his focus intense in a way that had scared her when it had first started happening. Now, she just knew he was studying her and using his monster’s power of observation to make sure he didn’t miss anything. “How many?”
She thought a moment before pushing to stand and making the bed. “I don’t know. At least ten, I guess.”
“That’ll be a long night.” He brought the wad of hair up to his nose and gave it a sniff before tucking it in his front pocket.
“Not if I get lucky.” She smirked, turning to him and approaching the dresser. “Who knows.” She perused the selection of head bands available. “Maybe if I ask for trouble with a biker gang, I’ll get it.”
“I don’t like this. It’s Monday. I have to work a shift in town.” He frowned down at her.
“Take the watch. It’ll beep if I’m in trouble.” She said easily, picking a burgundy headband and slipping it over her head so she could position it.
“I’ve been wearing it since the night of your nightmares.” He said. “I’ve been anxious about taking it off.”
She hesitated a moment, before fluffing her hair and running her fingers through it. “I’ve been okay. You don’t need to worry so much.”
“I thought that too.” He stepped aside as she opened the top drawer to study her underwear.
“Then you pulled a whole bunch of violent cards, woke up from a nightmare with monster scratches, and now you’ve had a panic attack.
I’m scared that if I take it off, something could happen to you and I wouldn’t know. ”
Janice froze as she grabbed two pair of thongs to consider. She really shouldn’t be stressing her brother like this. It was nearing the full moon. He had his own problems to deal with.
“I’m sorry.” She said sadly. “I should understand that. . . I never take off your locket.” She touched the little heart shaped locket on her bracelet thoughtfully, before turning her attention back to her choice of thongs. “It’s been a weird day.”
Kadir was silent long enough for her to pick out garter and stockings and start pulling them on. She changed underwear under her shirt, doing her best not to unintentionally flash her brother an ass cheek.
“Weird how?” She could feel his eyes tracking her through the room as she opened the closet door.
It wasn’t like her brother had never seen her naked.
They’d seen each other naked numerous times.
It saved time and water. But that didn’t mean they went out of their way to flash each other and see who’d go blind first. It just meant that, during times they did see each others bodies, they weren’t squeamish and disgusted.
Hell, fortunately, it’d been a while, but sometimes all you had was body heat. You did what you could to survive.
“I met a man today.” She paused as she took a moment to study a shirt before passing it. “He seemed like a good enough guy, but I couldn’t get a read on him.”
“At all?” He sounded as flabbergasted as she’d been.
“At all.” She nodded, flipping through garments and pausing to consider a pair of skinny, high waisted jeans with rips in the front. “I couldn’t read his aura and got nothing when I touched him and looked in his eyes.”
“That’s unusual. . .” He mused aloud.
She continued as though he hadn’t spoken.
“However, it gets weird when we released hands.” Her brother grunted curiously.
“I got a super powerful shock to my middle finger. Felt like I’d been electrocuted.
But when I went to ask him if he’d felt it too, he shut down on me.
And I mean, completely shut me out when all I’d done is say ‘Hi’.
” Her ire burned at remembered hostility.
“He wanted absolutely nothing to do with me and I didn’t get the chance to ask why. ”
She felt her brother frown as she flipped through the clothes some more and began perusing her selection of dresses. “That is strange. . . Did anything else happen to stand out about your anomaly man?”
She sucked her teeth in disapproval, frowning as she remembered how Double-A had watched her.
“First of all, he’s not my anything.” She said a bit bitingly before taking a deep breath to try and calm down.
“He’s Sascha’s doctor. . .” She said firmly, before adding in a more quiet voice, suddenly bereft of her recent fire towards the man they spoke about. “And he’s in love with her. . .”
“How do you know?” There was a vein of sympathy in her brother’s voice that she really didn’t care for at the moment. If he apologized, she was punching him in the arm.
“I could tell by his face. . . It’s the same look Lyle gives Addie when she’s not looking.
” She tried to keep the sadness out of her voice as she stopped at her favorite wine color dress.
It was the one Sascha had said ‘made fools of men’ and she wouldn’t lie, it did often seem the case.
Men tended to drool over her at an exponential rate.
. . perhaps she’d flirt a little tonight as well.
. . a jilted man could try and start a fight if she bruised his ego.
The dress was beautiful when she fought, always catching dramatic angles with its high side slits.
“I—”
“Say it, and I’ll break your arm.” She bit out harshly.
“But—”
“We want nothing to do with each other.” She practically growled. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
He was quiet for a long time, before finally sighing. “But that’s not how it seems from your end, sister.” She heard him walk to the door, stopping only a moment to say, “I’ll leave you to get dressed. I need to get ready for work.”
Janice sighed sullenly as she picked the dress from the closet. She supposed he was right. He was her twin. Though they were fraternal in appearance, sex, and monster, they could still feel and ascertain what was going on with one another.
The truth was, she did feel a sort of loss when it came to Ansell. It was stupid and unreasonable, she knew, but it was also jagged and raw. Like the man had ripped out a part of her. Like he’d rejected her. . . which she supposed he had.
But that wouldn’t stop her from living her life. You can’t miss something you never had because it would never live up to expectation.