Her Bad Boy (Chapter 17)

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

Chapter 16 | Chapter 17: Relics of the Past

Kevin shifted his position, took the warm bath towel Daisy had draped around his shoulders to dry his damp hair.

“Go on with your story,” Daisy urged.

“We arrived at camp only to be greeted by a bloodbath,” he went on in a low timbre. “It looked like some sick orgy gone wrong. Mutilated bodies everywhere, torn limbs sticking out of gouged orifices, perverted positions captured in rigor mortis... and the poor children. God knows which village they had raided. And the blood... so much blood... and the smell...”

“Okay, stop.”

Her interjection cut the cord to the past, and he blinked at her. She had turned a deathly shade of pale. “You all right?”

She nodded, sickly. “But I’m sorry I asked.”

“I told you so,” he said gently.

“Yeah, you did,” she acquiesced. “But what does that have to do with all this?”

“I’m getting to it. A team mate of ours- H-Hans, his name was...” Kevin’s voice dwindled down. I haven’t said that name for quite some time. “He found the relic under one of the bodies. We called it in, and were ordered to leave everything as it was and return to our base.”

“You just left?”

“Orders are orders,” he said, breaking her gaze. “A soldier follows orders. Except Hans took the relic with him, without telling anyone.”

“Not all soldiers follow orders, then.”

“Hans was always rebellious, but he knew when to tow the line - just. Had he done so that time, it would have been better for him.” And for us.

“It sounds like you didn’t like him.”

Kevin’s manner stiffened. “He was a team mate, part of our pack. Liking him had nothing to do with it. We’d have given our lives for each other.” But if the truth be told, growing up outside of the army Kevin never had much time for guys like Hans. The guy’s Afrikaner parents had instilled into him a cruel, racist streak, which he hid well enough until he had too much to drink. Kevin guessed Stephen had stayed loyal to the time they spent in the army together as kids, before the man grew up to be such a class-A dick. He and the rest of the pack had often been embarrassed by his antics, but you didn’t quit on your friends or on the bonds forged in the army.

“That doesn’t mean you liked him.”

Whether she knew it or not, Daisy was skirting around a sore point. “Perceptive of you. Let’s just say I never personally would’ve got on with him... his tastes were too discriminating for my liking.” Although he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, even himself, they’d secretly suffered each other for Stephen’s sake. He hadn’t wanted to get on the wrong side of his team leader’s childhood buddy, and out of respect for Stephen, Kevin had overlooked a lot of Hans’ flaws.

“You think he’s the one doing this?”

Maybe, if he wasn’t dead. Stephen killed his best friend to save my life, you see. “That’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“It just is.”

“But you recognised something up there. I know you did.”

Kevin moved his head up and down slowly, in an almost imperceptible nod. The towel, now cold, fell to the floor. “When we got back to base, Hans started acting strange. At first he was just mumbling gibberish in his sleep. About souls forged in flames. And the end of the world. Stuff that didn’t make any sense. Then he stopped sleeping. And eating. We tried our best to pick up his slack, but it was just getting harder and harder.”

“You should have told someone.”

“We thought we could handle it. Rather than squeal on a mate, we covered up for him as best we could. Then...”

Then on the morning of that fateful night he found Hans sitting bare-chested on his bunk, eyes in a glaze, hands in a frenzy carving a symbol on his stomach. Kevin tried to knock the army regulation combat knife from his bloodied hand.

“You drunk? What the fuck are you doing?”

“Writing.” His voice was in the single tone of an automaton or like a sleepwalker you saw in the movies. Words unnaturally blunted and truncated into single syllables. The voice eerily devoid of any feeling.

He kept his eye on the knife’s blade, saw tiny slivers of his barracks buddy’s flesh caught in its perforated teeth, where it had torn the tattooed skin. “Writing? Writing what for fuck’s sake?”

“His name.” The blade dived down.

“Whose name?”

“His. The one who will come to extinguish the flame. All flames. None will be twinned again. As flame no longer twins with flame, then shall the darkness come.”

“You’re not making sense, man.” Kevin made a second move for the knife as it came back up, and this time managed to knock it out of Hans’ bloody paw.

Hans was unmoved. “I bear his name. The one who will bring the dark. The dark is coming.”

“No shit it’s coming. We’re on night duty tonight, so you better get it together.”

“The dark is coming. The dark is coming.” He sounded like an audio glitch on loop, increasing in speed. “The dark is coming. The dark is com-”

“Listen to me,” Kevin spoke over his ranting. “If you keep this shit up it is very likely they will lock you up and throw away the fucking key. Do you want that?”

That seemed to reach him. He fell silent, swaying ever so slightly on his bunk bend, his blood stained fingers tracing the strange looking hieroglyphic he had carved into his skin. Then the glazed eyes cleared and Kevin saw a semblance of the Hans he used to know return to his features. “Kev? What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here? Are you fucking shitting me? You’re the one carving up his stomach and chanting like some possessed freak.”

“Am I? Oh... yeah, kind of cool, huh?”

Kevin stared at him, long and hard. “If you pull a prank like this on our patrol tonight, so help me, I’ll shoot you. Got it?”

Hans grinned at him in reply, and cocked two fingers in the shape of a gun at Kevin’s head. It made his blood run cold. “Not if I shoot you first,” he said, giving him a wink. “Not if I shoot you first.”

“Kevin?”

Daisy’s voice from out of the ether. He responded almost automatically, “Yes?”

“You said, then? Then what happened?”

“Then one night he went insane. Wrote that same message you saw upstairs.” In exactly the same handwriting, he omitted to add.

“But what does it mean?”

He drained the mug of cold tea, and wiped his lips. “You’re guess is as good as mine...”

“Could it have something to do with the relic he stole?”

“Can’t see how.” He got up and stretched. “I really need to sort out some clothes. Else greeting the police in my underwear is going to be one for the books.”

Daisy jumped up. “I put your clothes on the central heating to dry. They might be wearable by now. I’ll go see.”

He watched her return with his jeans. “Still patchy in places,” she said.

“It’ll be fine,” he replied, taking them from her with a grateful smile.

He sat back down and proceeded to put them on, while Daisy persisted with her line of questioning. “Well? Could it be something written on the relic? Did you ever find out what it said?”

Standing, he pulled his jeans up to his waist. Zipped and buttoned, he stretched again. “As far as I can remember the relic was a chant to some Minoan god. But what god I don’t know. His arrival was meant to spell the end of the world. If Hans was right...”

“Like that Mayan calender a few years back?”

“In a way. But that was a calendar that just stopped at a certain point, so we just assumed it meant the end of time. As I recall the chant on the relic clearly stated the end of the world. Something about flames. And darkness.” He remembered the words, remembered, too, the knife’s blade as it dipped into Hans’ stomach, shining blood red.

The one who will come to extinguish the flame. All flames. None will be twinned again. As flame no longer twins with flame, then shall the darkness come.

“The dark is coming,” she whispered, a myriad of shivers fluctuating in the high timbre of her voice.

“Come here,” he said, taking her in his arms. “Everything will be okay, you’ll see.”

Her breath was hot and hurried against his skin as she spoke. “But how can you be so sure it isn’t this Hans guy doing this?”

Because ghosts don’t leave tracks. “Just trust me on this one, it can’t be him.”

He felt she was finally about to relax, when a muffled thud resounded from somewhere in the house.

“That wasn’t a knock at the door.” She gripped his arm. They stared at each other.

In a low whisper, he said, “Stay here.”

“No. I’m coming with you.”

He lowered his voice further. “Stay here.”

“No. I’m coming with you.”

He gave up, signalled for quiet, and listened out for the noise again.

Thud-thud-thud, then again, thud-thud-thud.

He couldn’t shake the feeling they were becoming the plot to a horror movie as he rose on the balls of his feet and tiptoed across the kitchen to the door. The imposing silence was back again, booming in his ears.

Thud-thud-thud.

His mind raced through all the possibilities. It was too far away to be coming from the living room. But too clear to be coming from outside.

Thud-thud-thud.

It was coming from somewhere inside the house, he was sure of that now. All his instincts told him they were not alone, that the silence which had made him feel uneasy had been the presence of a third man all along.

Thud-thud-thud.

Upstairs. The sounds were coming from upstairs. He turned back and motioned to Daisy not to follow him, but she shook her head.

He tried once more. “Stay by the front door. If you hear me go down, make for the car.”

But she was adamant. “Why don’t we do that now? Leave whatever is up there and just go?”

But he was adamant, too. “I have to do this. I have to know.”

Thud-thud-thud.

He looked at her, and in her face saw something of himself. This really is one gutsy girl, he thought. He turned towards the sound.

Thud-thud-thud.

He was at the foot of the stairs now, and the sounds were definitely coming in that direction. But they weren’t the sounds of footsteps. What were they? He strained to listen, trying to work out what could be making that noise, and the best plan of action to surprise it.

Thud-thud-thud.

Was it hammering? Or a foot banging on the floor? Or had recent experience skewed his instincts? Was it just Iain’s open bedroom door banging against its frame, pushed by a breeze coming in through the window?

That was the rational explanation, although every sinew and muscle in his body said different. His attuned senses had caught the smell of something not quite right, and they were primed for danger. He moved noiselessly up the stairs. With each step the noises got louder.

Thud-thud-thud.

And louder.

Thud-thud-thud.

And louder.

Daisy stuck close behind him, as he braced himself at the top of the stairs, but the corridor was empty.

Likewise Iain’s bedroom. The door was firmly shut.

He waited out for the sounds again, his back against the wall, but was greeted only by that familiar creeping silence from before, which had seemed to make itself at home in Sally’s house.

End of Chapter 17 | Read Chapter 18

Yours in love,