Noir: A Crimson Shadow Novel

by Nathan Squiers

  Instead, Kyle’s boots traveled passed the living room and down the hall to the front door and Xander listened as the voices of his stepfather’s friends became clearer as they entered. Then Kyle’s footsteps returned with several others following behind him.

  There were three lights in the living room: one of which had burnt out and another that had been rendered useless when Kyle had out yanked out its cord to use as a makeshift whip to punish Xander and his mother for taking a walk without his permission. The remaining source of light clung to the ceiling and collected dust. This sole source of illumination was blocked out as the men entered and towered over Xander.

  Though he always tried to be brave, he couldn’t help but trip on his breath as he turned around and saw the men grinning down at him. Kyle held his hunting knife—a tool that he’d used many times in the past to scare Xander and his mother—in his left hand, pinching the black handle between his thumb and middle finger and tapped his index along the guard. The room seemed to go cold then as the shadowed forms of the men moved towards him until Xander felt like he was being swallowed up by the darkness.

  Kyle, flipping the knife in his hand so that he could grip it by the handle, had plunged it into the arm of the couch. The sound of the fabric ripping under the assault had made Xander jump as the furniture was slashed and a clot of its stuffing exploded out from the wound. Xander shivered and Kyle, as he had so many times before, smiled at his stepson’s fear and inhaled through his nose.

  “Ready for a good time, son?”

  One of the men stepped forward, pulling out an old shaving razor in his right hand and swinging it casually on its hinge as he looked at Xander; his wiry brown hair and fierce, dark eyes like that of a feral animal. Another—a fat man who wore a leather jacket—called the quivering child a “li’l faggot” as he cracked his thick knuckles and licked his lips while a bony Latino leaned against the butchered couch, rubbing his crotch over his tight jeans and laughing wickedly at this comment. The last, a blond man with an earring, stood in the back and lit a cigarette.

  Kyle had ignored the others, letting them carry on as they pleased, and stepped around them to get close to his stepson and looked down at him with a grin, making Xander feel smaller than he already did. In the past, whenever Kyle’s friends had come over, he had entertained them by making a show out of abusing Xander.

  He’d been certain that this occasion would be no different.

  On that night, however, they seemed to have other plans.

  “I mean, they’re only paying us to do the brat in. They never said nothing about having some fun with him first,” the blond had said around his cigarette.

  The Latino had nodded excitedly, rubbing his crotch harder, “Shit yea, bitch! We don’t need to scrap him straight up! Let’s play around with him and then peel him like a grape! We’re getting paid one way or another; long as they get the body!”

  “Whoo!” the fat man hollered, his gut rolling under the leather jacket, “Enough fuckin’ cash to keep us rollin’ for TEN lifetimes!”

  It took several minutes of talk like this—talk that, though he hadn’t understood, he still crept away from—before Kyle finally shrugged and began to undo his belt. Seeing this, the men all laughed and cheered and circled around Xander to watch the beating.

  The Latino, giggling like a little boy, pushed Xander into Kyle, who caught him in his left hand and brought the belt down with his right. The strike connected with his chest; the large metal buckle sounding off as it drove into soft flesh. A cry of pain shot from Xander’s mouth and the men all laughed and cheered Kyle on.

  “Hold him down!” Kyle had ordered.

  All the others kneeled down to hold the squirming child to the floor as Kyle repeatedly brought his belt down on his torso. Xander screamed and squirmed to get free but only succeeded in hurting himself more as the tight grips of the men dug into his wrists and legs. As the beating continued, the man with the razor let go of Xander’s left leg for a moment before the fat one, already holding his right, pressed his bulk down on both. With his hands free, the man pinched the blade with the fingers of his left hand as he held the handle with his right and chuckled. After a moment of teasing, the razor was brought down, slicing through the fabric of the nice blue shirt that Xander’s mom had bought for him, exposing his already bruised chest. Then, as the chuckle evolved into a heavy cackle, the man carefully traced the edge of the blade across Xander’s chest, threatening to cut him and making him cry out even louder; tears pouring down his face.

  Too much terror.

  Too much commotion.

  Too much going on for anyone to notice as Xander’s mother emerged from their bedroom. Xander saw her as she approached; noticed her red, puffy cheek and bruised eye as she charged the group; her eyes filled with fury.

  “Leave him the fuck alone, you bastards!”

  The slap landed and the entire room had hushed as Kyle had turned to face his wife, shock and anger shooting from his eyes. His friends all stood and stepped away, giving Kyle room enough to approach his wife and take her by the throat and spit in her gasping face.

  Her eyes danced in a ballet of terror until they had landed on Xander, who stared back in mirrored fright, his lower lip—torn and pumping blood down his quivering chin.

  “Xander!” she called to him. “Run away! Hide! It’ll be—” Any other words she had planned were cut short as Kyle’s grip tightened around her throat.

  But he couldn’t run.

  He couldn’t look away.

  Couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.

  Kyle looked over his shoulder at his friends as sadistic inspiration struck, “What do you say we have a little ‘down time’ with Emily here before we get to business?”

  His wife’s eyes widened then as the men, grunting and chuckling, approached and began undoing their belts and pants. She struggled harder against Kyle, who finally threw her down onto the floor and began to unzip his pants, as well. With her throat free of its restraint, a hoarse groan escaped her mouth before growing into an ear-splitting protest and howls of pain as the men began to pummel her to accommodate their desires.

  Kyle stood over the mass, casually watching as his friends beat and raped his wife. As her screams grew louder and more desperate, his smile broadened and he let out a euphoric sigh, “This is the life, ain’t it?” he’d called over to his stepson.

  Xander hadn’t been able to drag his gaze from the sight as he took small, shaky steps away until his back found the far wall. Realizing he could go no farther, he whimpered, his eyes blurred with tears and a painful knot formed in his throat.

  From the heap of men, he saw ripped pieces of his mother’s red and purple dress as they were torn from her body and tossed aside. A shriek of pain shot out and a fist-full of black hair flew straight up like confetti from the writhing mound. Somewhere in the chaos the Latino slapped his victim, cutting off her screams for a moment.

  The men continued; twisting the one good thing in Xander’s life to accommodate their perversions. He clenched his eyes from the sight and began shaking his head, screaming obscenities he’d only ever heard Kyle utter. Though the words were useless, they were his only weapon.

  For the first time Xander was yelling at Kyle, begging to be the object of their torture. Despite this, they ignored him and only pushed harder, cut deeper, and laughed louder. Crushed and defeated, his knees buckled and he felt himself slide down the wall into a crumpled heap.

  As each of the monsters sated their lust, they turned to beating their victim. A vase that held fresh flowers was snatched up from the counter and brought down on his mother’s skull, spilling daisies and water and blood all over the carpet.

  Despite the severe beating, she somehow stayed conscious—somehow stayed alive!—and called out again and again, telling Xander to run away and hide.

  But he still couldn’t move.

  Kyle smiled at her desperation as he pulled the knife out of the couch and spun it in his han
d, grinning as he held it over his wife’s heaving chest. As if suddenly remembering about the screaming child behind him, he turned to look at Xander with a smile.

  “Perks of the job, eh son?”

  And then the blade dropped.

  And dropped.

  And…

  Xander found his legs then and turned and ran. He was not a hero. He was not brave. And he had failed the only person he cared about.

  In a panicked sprint he collided with the wooden doors of the coat closet and fell back, too scared and determined to hide to even begin to think about the pain. Rolling to his hands and knees, Xander had crawled into the closet and dug further and further through the mounds of coats and shoes until he’d reached the vacuum cleaner at the back and hid behind it, pulling all the coats on top of him to hide from the last dying cries of his mother.

  The remainder of that night was spent in hiding as he shook in fear and, more than that, hatred of himself; listening to his stepfather and his friends as they cursed and ransacked the house looking for him. The one time someone thought to check the closet, he flattened himself and held his breath, ignoring the pain—feeling he deserved every moment of it—that came from his contortion. After a moment, a series of curses was uttered and the closet was slammed shut.

  The next morning, he had been dragged—screaming and crying—from his hiding place by the police. The neighbors, it turned out, had made the call, reporting a possible break-in when they’d seen a group of men leaving the house with the television and several other valuables. In the end, it took four officers to drag the kicking and screaming boy out of the house.

  ****

  Recalling the events, Xander clenched his fists and held back the tears that welled in his eyes. His grandmother had promised him long ago that Kyle was dead; that he had died and could never hurt him again.

  She’d lied to him!

  He looked down at the open box containing his twin revolvers. He had only ever held Yin, entertaining the dark fantasy of suicide from the solid black revolver. As he thought about it, he realized he had never even touched Yang. The irony of using a twin set of guns called Yin and Yang in an uneven fashion only made him feel more compelled to use them together.

  And he had the perfect loose end to test them on.

  He looked up at Marcus and Stan. They had sat for some time, sipping their beers and looking out the nearby porch door at a family of deer that passed through the backyard. How long had they been waiting for him to say something? He looked once more at the guns; weapons that had been his father’s when he had been a warrior for the Odin Clan. Finally, he nodded in understanding of what had to be done.

  “Kyle needs to die.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Plan

  Waking up the next night, Xander pulled himself out of Stan’s guest room bed and looked out the window in time to see the last few rays of daylight disappear. He lingered on the sight a moment until the sky had lost all traces of orange and turned to a dark purple. Pulling himself up, he stepped out of the room and padded down the stairs and into the kitchen, heading straight for Stan’s fridge. As he opened it, he realized that the once well-stocked fridge was down to only three beers.

  He’d known before going to bed the night before that Stan and Marcus would stay up and make plans on how to train him, but, seeing the damage that had been done to Stan’s supply, he had to wonder just how long they’d been up…

  “Last two are mine, in case you’re wondering,” Marcus called out from the living room.

  He heard Stan scoff, “Like hell!”

  Xander turned and walked out of the kitchen to join his friends, biting his lip for a moment when Tiger-Trepis slunk away upon seeing him enter.

  “He still doesn’t like me…” he sighed, turning away from the nervous-looking animal.

  Stan gave him a reassuring smile, “Give him time. So how are you feeling?”

  Xander frowned at the question and shrugged, “Can’t you read my mind?”

  “I could,” Stan nodded, “but that doesn’t mean I want to.”

  Marcus smirked and chugged the last of his beer, letting out a sizable belch before pointing to Xander with the empty bottle, “How bout I give it a shot: you’re scared… and you need blood.”

  Xander glared, “I am not—” The two stared at him and he sighed, letting his shoulder’s sag in defeat, “How’d you know?”

  Marcus, still smirking, shrugged, “I can hear it: you’re heart-rate is high and your stomach is growling.”

  Xander shook his head and plopped down on the couch next to Marcus. He recalled the previous night when, in the midst of the chaos, he too had been able to hear the three’s heart beats. He tried to listen for them again, but found it difficult to focus his hearing to that degree. Turning to Stan, he raised an eyebrow, “So what do you ‘see’?”

  Stan frowned, “You really want me to?”

  Xander shrugged, “Doesn’t matter much now, I suppose.”

  Leaning back, Stan reached out with his aura and wrapped it around Xander’s head, “You… dreamt of your mother again,” he bit his lip and looked down as he “saw” the dream, “and you’re thinking of all the ways you’d like to torture and kill Kyle.”

  Xander nodded as Stan’s aura withdrew, “I know that both sangs and aurics have different abilities that help them to hunt and feed, but which of the two is more powerful?”

  Marcus shrugged, “As much as I hate to say it, that’s an unanswered question. I mean, I’ve seen sangs that could move so fast that an auric couldn’t read a full thought before they’d been brought down.”

  Stan nodded. “And there are aurics with such spectacular control that a sang didn’t have time to react before they’d been drained and killed,” he added with a chuckle.

  As the two continued their back-and-forth, Marcus smirked wide, exposing his fangs as they extended from his gums. Not about to be outdone, Stan once again reached out with his aura and snatched Marcus’ beer out of his hand; beginning to spin it in midair. Though there was a substantial amount of fluid still in the bottle, the speed that he spun it with kept any from spilling out.

  Xander smiled at the exchange and looked down at the coffee table, where he had left Yin and Yang the night before, only to find the spot barren.

  “Where are my guns?”

  Stan looked up at the question, becoming distracted, and the bottle slowed in mid-spin, bringing the force of gravity back into effect and spilling the contents all over his shirt and pants, “Ah! Son of a bitch!” he shot Xander a glare and got up to wipe himself off.

  Marcus laughed at Stan’s blunder and smiled at Xander, “Thank you for that.”

  Xander ignored this and narrowed his eyes at Marcus, “Where are they?”

  “I brought them to a friend of mine,” he said with a shrug.

  Xander scowled, “You stole my guns and brought them to somebody I don’t even know? What for?”

  Marcus leaned forward, stealing Stan’s bottle and taking a sip before shaking his head. “Chill out! They needed to be cleaned and inspected,” he looked up at Xander, who was still glaring at him. “Stan told me you don’t know how to do either,” he took another sip and stood up, “They also need to be loaded—over and over and over again—I might add. Three bullets just ain’t gonna cut it, and unless you intended on killing your enemies by poking them to death, I figured you might want some ammunition. Now wipe that fucking glare off your face, or I’ll teach you right here and right now how to take a punch to the teeth.”

  Xander bit his lip and recoiled as his extending fangs tore his lip. He took a breath to relax and thought about what Marcus had just said. Three bullets? He’d known that Yin had had the one round in it for all those years but…

  “There were bullets in Yang?”

  Marcus shook his head. “Are you kidding me? You didn’t know?” Marcus shook his head, “Look, you need to learn to know your weapons inside and out. If you’re on the field,
you’d better know how many you got before you find yourself pulling the trigger of an empty gun!”

  Xander nodded, beginning to turn red, and looked back up to Marcus, “I take it training’s begun then?”

  Marcus nodded, “With me it has.” He sighed and looked down, his voice becoming serious, “Listen kid… when you’re done, you’re going to be taking to the streets with no clan to back you up! You had better be ready to defend yourself!” He shook his head and gulped the rest of the beer and set the bottle next to four others by the fireplace and let out another belch, “I’ve trained fledglings before. It’s a long and hard process that takes several months to fall into and almost a year to complete, and Devil-man there”—he motioned to Stan, who was returning wearing a new pair of pants and a tank-top—“and myself have decided to each take a month to get as much as we can in your head. Now Stan tells me that should be plenty of time since your noggin’s filled with all of your old man’s combat training as well as the…” he frowned and looked at Stan.

  “The awakened auric potential,” Stan finished for him as he sat down on the couch beside him and patted his shoulder hard enough to send him lurching forward with each slap, “I told you to have more faith in the boy,” he said, finally turning towards Xander. “You’ve got forces on your side. Though the voice you grew up with has been silenced, Trepis is now more a part of you than he ever was before, and soldier-boy and I believe we can drag those instincts out, as well as refocus your rage into something more”—he smiled—“productive.”

  Xander looked between the two before nodding, “Alright, then!” He stood up, “Let’s make me a warrior!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Training with Marcus

  Xander had visited the park often with his mother before Kyle had come into his life. He used to spend hours on the swings, watching in fascination as the sight of the earth below him changed into the beautiful sky above. Later on, when his mother got married and trips to the park became less and less frequent, he started dreaming of being on the swings, looking down at Kyle as he beat his mother and then swing upward and see…