Her Bad Boy (Chapter 16)

How does a girl cope when her twin flame is the definitive bad boy? (18+ Erotica)

Chapter 15 | Chapter 16: Dead Surely

Kevin’s stomach muscles tightened as he re-read the words clawed out across Iain’s bedroom wall.

The dark is coming.

He had seen this somewhere else before. His jaw clenched, feelings churning deep in the pit of his stomach. It was Afghanistan all over again. He felt Daisy’s fingers inadvertently brush across his navel as she took a fearful step back towards him in an instinctual search for cover. When she looked up with large and fearful questioning eyes, he tried to belie the fear he felt in his voice.

“We need to call the police,” he said, placing his hands gently on her trembling shoulders and guiding her out of the room.

“Wh-what is going on? Who would do that? What the fuck could it mean?”

He felt anything he said would break the dam of everyday logic that kept the nightmares at bay, so he said nothing, camouflaging his thoughts in the sudden dead of sound. The rain had stopped its onslaught again, but the silence it left behind was ominous. Like an infected boil pregnant with pus, about to burst and leak out to merge with the encroaching shadows outside.

She peered up at him, intently. “You know something about all this, don’t you?” Her voice rose higher in surprise when she realised she had surmised right. “You do know something, don’t you?”

“Not really.”

She snorted, her fear suddenly gone and the old defiant Daisy back in its place. “What sort of answer is that? You either do or you don’t.”

“Both. I do and I don’t.” Something drew him towards the writing on the wall. He placed Daisy at a safe distance in the corridor, and walked back to the wall in the young boy’s bedroom, an arm outstretched in the air as if in a dream.

“Don’t...” she whispered.

“It’s okay. I just want to see if...” ...it’s fresh. He ended the sentence in his mind. Tentatively his fingertips touched the wall, tracing the shiny letters daubed into it like bleeding cuts. It felt wet to the skin. He brought his hand back and sniffed his fingers. A coppery smell. Possibly blood. An animal’s maybe. Done recently. Very recent.

“Well?” she asked.

“Let’s go downstairs. You put the kettle on, then call the police.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Take a quick look round outside.”

Her voice startled itself into a stammer, but Kevin felt a rush of admiration at how quickly she got it under control. “S-so... you think whoever did this could still be around?”

“No chance,” he said quickly, though not too quickly. She certainly had guts, but he didn’t want to frighten her any more than she had been already. “They’ll be long gone by now, especially after all the noise we just made.”

“And you’re going to go out like that?”

Talking about his lack of dress, he noticed her eyes were firmly fixed on his face. He gave her his best grin under the circumstances. “Well if they’re not long gone by now, seeing me in my underwear is bound to frighten them off. Not unless, of course, you’ve got a pair of jeans that happen to fit me?”

She shook her head. “The only thing of Iain’s that’d fit you is his duvet cover.”

“Not my colour. Now come on, downstairs with you. Put the kettle on, I won’t be long.”

She dug her heels in at the top of the stairs, bumping against him. “Hey, why am I making the drinks?”

“Would you like to take a look around while I start a brew?”

Daisy relented. “Point taken. But be quick.”

“As quick as I can. Does Sally have a torch about the house?”

“Yeah, I’ll grab it for you.” He followed her slim frame down the stairs, admiring once more the surety of her gait, which hid what he could only assume was a reflection of the terror he was finding difficult to reign in himself. Because she couldn’t possibly imagine what the writing meant. Of the evil that must have followed them from Afghanistan. Of what it was capable of.

At the front door, she took hold of his hand and placed a small, luminous green cased flash-light in his large palm. “Be quick. Don’t be a hero,” she spoke softly, keeping hold of his hand.

He tried to grin again, but realised he was all out. “Why lass, I didn’t know you cared.”

“Piss off,” she replied, dropping her hold. His arm fell back down to his naked side, heavy as stone. “I want you back so you can tell me exactly what the fuck you think is going on here. So just be quick, okay?”

“I’ll be back,” he said, opening the door and slipping stealthily into the shadows of the night. He saw through her bravado easily enough. Could she see through his? He shut the door behind him.

Her muffled voice called out to him. “K-Kevin?”

“I’m okay. Lock the door,” he called back to her. Hearing the turn of the key and the click of the bolt fall into place, and satisfied the door was secure, he stood still for a moment, taking stock of the situation.

Allowing his eyes to accustom themselves to the dark, he listened as Daisy’s footsteps faded away from behind the door, taking her towards the relative safety of the centre of the house. Good. Making a drink and calling the police would occupy her thoughts, keep her busy. Not that he thought the police were going to be able to help. If what he feared was true, they were all in greater danger than anyone could imagine.

Now outside and in the cover of dark, he allowed himself to think back to his last tour of duty in Afghanistan. Of what he thought they had left behind them. But hell is where the heart is, he thought grimly, scrupulously scanning the area, and silently stepping further into the shadows cast by the house, letting the small, but strong beam of light from Sally’s torch lead the way. You can’t go into the heart of darkness and not expect something evil to follow you back out.

And something had. Something that had affected one of their team. Turned him insane, and turned that insanity into a murderous killing spree, unleashing it on the innocent lives of civilians. Painting the walls with their blood. With the same message.

The dark is coming.

But what really chilled him to the bone wasn’t that they were the same words, but the writing itself. It was an exact replica of his team mate’s maniacal handwriting. Which was impossible because he was dead. Stephen had taken him out. Just in time to save Kevin’s life from being the last fatal casualty of an army buddy gone murderously renegade.

He thought back to that night he unwillingly revisited most times his head hit the pillow. To that time of being completely cut off and stranded by one of your own, tied up by an army buddy you’d been prepared to give your life for under different circumstances, forced helplessly to watch him rape and maul innocent civilians. Then stand in front of you, naked and bathed in their blood, and without flinching, without a word of explanation save for the mad scrawling, shoot you in the head.

His memories were shards of glass. Untouchable. I wish he’d shot me first. That had been his last thought, or what he thought would be his final on Earth, until he woke up in the army hospital. And he had opened his eyes to a whole raft of changes. The brass, afraid of a local tribal insurrection, wanted the massacre hushed up at the highest levels, and it had got what it wanted. It always did. Due to his head wounds he was given an honourable discharge for his silence, while Stephen was put up for a commendation for saving his life.

But as their team leader, Stephen took it harder than the rest of the pack. A son of a decorated Field Marshall, that was Stephen all over. Kevin had tried to get him to talk about that night on his daily visits to him in the hospital, but by the time Kevin had come round his friend had retreated far into himself. Marooned in silence, Stephen blamed himself for the murders, for killing a team mate, for not getting there in time to save more lives. His silence had said as much.

He had lasted just five days after Kevin gained conciousness, and Kevin knew it was the cover up that galled his team leader the most. So his mate refused the commendation and quietly told their commanding officer he was quitting the only life he’d known. When the news reached Kevin, he couldn’t believe at first. Because Stephen would die first, rather than quit.

Don’t run and don’t quit, that was the motto of their barracks, don’t run, don’t quit and pray for the luck of the angels. In their own ways, they had done both, and lost their faith in the third. But he didn’t blame Stephen for quitting. It had shaken them all more than they would ever admit. Had Kevin not been offered a discharge as a way out, he might have quit, too. Only what he did was lie in a hospital bed and wait for a new head of hair to grow over his scars.

So the official line for Stephen’s resignation was the death of a close friend, while he was honourably discharged for head wounds suffered in the course of his duties, but unofficially there was more to it than that. There always was. Except Kevin hadn’t realised how much more, until Stephen had come up from England for a visit and finally opened up to him about that night.

How Stephen had to answer rapid fire from a childhood pad brat, using the bodies of girls and boys as young as six and seven as human shields until he could get a clean shot. And going in for the cold kill, how the image of fear and remorse on his friend’s face on the point of his death haunted his team leader most of all.

The dark is coming.

And if Kevin knew anything, it was that telling lies didn’t come easy to the man who had risked his life to save his own. If the man who dragged him out of that hell hole said he killed a man, then you could be sure that man was dead.

So, what are you doing looking for a dead man in the dark?

He had a lot of questions coming up with answers that didn’t make any sense. Dead men didn’t come back to life and travel thousands of miles to exact revenge. Or to announce their presence by signing the walls of their young victims with fresh blood. But something obviously had. Someone who knew the real story the army had tried to bury out in Afghanistan, and who wouldn’t let the ghosts of the dead rest. He knew that much the minute he set eyes on the writing in the bedroom.

But he knew he hadn’t come out searching for a dead man, either. Ghosts didn’t leave tracks. When he left the house, it was to see if there were any clues to who - or what an almost inaudible voice chimed in his head - it could be. He scanned the last length of the periphery of the house with the torch. And more than that, it was an opportunity to collate his thoughts, compose himself and figure out just how much he should tell Daisy.

Speak of the devil.

He spun around, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end at the sound of approaching footsteps. Although he recognised her tread, it took all the years of military training ingrained in him to quickly regulate the fight-or-flight responses kicking in, quashing any fluctuations in his body rhythm.

And she shall appear. “I thought I told you to stay inside.”

“Aren’t you cold? My goosebumps have got goosebumps. And I’ve got clothes on,” she whispered, her eyes hovering around his face.

“I thought I told you to stay inside,” he repeated.

“You didn’t actually. You told me to lock the door.”

“So why did you unlock it?”

He watched her bite her bottom lip in that naughty schoolgirl way he was quickly growing fond of, as she begrudgingly said, “I feel safer out here with you than I do in there alone.”

He let her words sink in, before asking quietly, “Tea done? Police called?”

“Yes and yes. Found anything?”

He made one last sweep with the torch’s beam. “No.” Ghosts didn’t leave tracks. He took her by the hand. “Come on, let’s go in.”

The warmth of the kitchen seemed to reawaken the numbed senses of his skin as he sat down at the kitchen table. Daisy wrapped a large white bath towel across his shoulders. It felt good. “Hey you warmed this...”

“You sound surprised,” she gave a small chuckle, placing a hot mug of milky tea in front of him.

“I sound grateful,” he said, taking a long sip from the mug. “This tastes great.”

“Glad you’re not fussy.I didn’t ask how you take it.”

“This time I am surprised. It’s just how I like it. Thought you remembered from our breakfast.”

“All I remember is how you nearly pulled my arm out of its socket.” She pulled a breakfast bar stool over, and sat down next to him, giving him a long look. He stared back, reading her look correctly. He picked up Sally’s torch and rolled it back and forth under one palm on the table, its plastic casing quietly growling against the grain of wood.

She spoke first, taking the torch from him. “No more small talk. Tell me what you know.” She pointed upwards, indicating Iain’s bedroom. “Tell me about that.”

“You want me to tell you what I know,” he said in a low voice, “but the truth is I don’t know what that is any more than you do. I only know I’ve seen it before.”

“Where?”

“Afghanistan.”

“And?”

“And? There is no and. Not yet.”

“Look, I think I’ve already figured out how much you hate being in the dark. Well show me the same courtesy.”

“I don’t think what I have to tell you will shed much light on any of this. Might just put you more in the dark,” he warned.

“Let me be the judge of that,” she said. “I’ll never forgive myself for what happened to Iain. Don’t add to it. I need to know if he’s still in danger.”

The silence encroached again as he retreated into his thoughts. He imagined the shadows expanding outside, growing in momentum, pushing up against the walls outside, slimy and slick from the clamminess of rising mist. Pushing their way in with the creeping silence.

As though Daisy had read his thoughts, she edged closer to him, scuffing the feet of her stool on the tiled floor. “Just tell me what you know,” she said.

He nodded. Where to start?

“Our team were on a scouting expedition in northern Afghanistan,” he began. “It’s relatively peaceful compared to the all-out war zones in the south and east of the country, and we’d been sent to reinforce the German-led Regional Command North on an excavation. It was all hush-hush, and our orders only told us we were to act as glorified look-outs for the German troops in a joint operation. We didn’t much care. We thought we'd hit the lottery leaving hostile territory for a few days. Little did we know.”

In between his pauses the silence continued to grow, but Daisy didn’t seem to notice. She remained still, listening, as if an unwitting victim of Medusa turned to stone, the hush of night crowding ever closer in on them. With a shrug of his shoulders, he continued with his tale: “Rumours had trickled down to us from chain of command, as they do. Something had been accidentally found after a mine explosion. In a cave, hidden in a mountain.”

Daisy stirred from her suspense, her curiosity piqued. “What was it?”

“An ancient disc. They had sent some archaeologists and linguistics experts over before we got there to examine the hieroglyphs on it. One of them called it a four thousand-year-old mystery that had finally been solved. Or so we read in his notes. He wasn’t around to tell us. No one was. When we got there everyone had been slaughtered, soldiers, academics, staff - everyone.”

Daisy inhaled sharply. “By what?”

“By each other,” he replied. “Are you sure you want me to go on?”

“Dead sure,” she said, rather uncertainly.

End of Chapter 16 | Read Chapter 17

Yours in love,