Dark Child

by Jo Raven

  Elba looks uncomfortable. “It’s a big accusation. It won’t stick without proof.”

  “Look, Ross said his mom was wearing a swan pendant when she left. And you found the pendant. Isn’t the husband the first suspect?”

  He watches me closely. “That’s right. But being the husband isn’t enough to indict Jasper Jones, even if we confirm that the skeleton belongs to his wife.”

  “Can’t you search his house? That ax…” I fight the shiver that sneaks down my spine. “Ross said Jasper still has it. Maybe there’s blood from the victim on it?”

  “That’d be hard, after all this time.” Elba spits in the dirt. “But yeah, I could search the house on grounds of suspicion for murder. Oh, and thanks for the heads-up on this graveyard.”

  Cos whimpers.

  He claps my back again, knocking the air out of me. He’s thin but strong. “Good seeing you. If there’s anything else I can do…”

  “As a matter of fact, there is one thing. Did you talk to Ross?”

  “Ross was taken away by the paramedics to sew the gash in his shoulder Jasper left him with.” He frowns. “Why? Do you think he knows something more pertaining to the case?”

  “I honestly don’t know. But we’re going to the hospital to talk to him anyway.”

  Ross is in a half-empty room, with only two other patients who seem asleep, or probably doped up on painkillers and other good stuff.

  He’s reclining in a narrow bed, propped on two thick pillows, watching a small muted TV screen mounted on the wall with a scowl on his face.

  From the way Matt told the story, I thought the knife had barely scratched him, but the gash is long, starting from his chest and going over his shoulder. Streaks of blood run down his bare chest, under the big white bandage taped in place over the stitches.

  Holy shit. Looks less like Jasper threw a knife at him and more like he tried to carve him up. Old habits die hard?

  “Hi, Ross,” Cos says, and he jerks as if touched with a live wire. “How are you holding up?”

  His gaze skitters around the room, as if expecting an attack, and when it lands on her, he relaxes.

  The whole thing only takes two seconds, but it replays in my mind like a movie. The way he tensed. The way he relaxed when he saw her.

  “Still alive,” he mutters. “Yeah, so maybe I shouldn’t have gone back home. If you came to say I told you so…”

  “Well, I did.” I shove my hands into my pockets. “And it doesn’t matter. I’m glad you’re alive.”

  “Does it hurt?” Cos asks. “Shall I ask the nurse for more painkillers?

  He grunts an unintelligible reply, but he’s staring at us like we’re apparitions, eyes a little wide.

  I stare right back at him, trying to figure him out.

  Ross is two years older than me, roughly Octavia’s age. He’d always seemed huge to me as we were growing up. I guess he was much taller than me for most of my life, when two years seem like a huge difference, but it’s almost as if I’m looking at myself on that bed.

  With added tattoos and scars and the new bandage, and of course the ever-present sneer, that is.

  It could have been me. What if he’d been born to Maggie Watson, and I’d been born to his now dead mother? If I’d grown up with our dad, would I have turned out like Ross—and would he have turned out like me?

  “If you’re not staying with Jasper, then where are you staying?” I ask him.

  “Wanna keep tabs on me?

  “Just curious. Where do you sleep?”

  Another undecipherable look. “Here and there.”

  “Fine, don’t tell me. I’m honestly here just to see you’re okay.”

  And strangely, I realize that’s true. Nobody deserves to be stabbed to death by their bully dad, not even bully children.

  Right?

  I’m staring at the bandage. Some blood has started to seep through, a darker shade, a red haze.

  Ross follows my gaze to his bandaged shoulder. “He was going for my heart,” he says dully. “He missed.”

  “How did he miss?”

  He shrugs and winces, face paling, hand going to his shoulder.

  “Maybe he didn’t really want to kill you,” I mutter.

  A strange thought crosses my mind. Of all his kids—us three, and any others we don’t know about yet, he only kept Ross close.

  As if he really loved him. His favorite son.

  But Ross is shaking his head. “He was drunk off his ass.”

  “And yet he got you good.”

  “I let him get too close. Listen…” His throat works. His hands curl and uncurl on top of the covers. “Tell the police to look in the garden shed. Dad… he used to be member of an MC. I found a blood-spattered jacket in the garden shed, right there with the ax. The logo is a circle with a skull in the middle. Kinda looks like an eye from the distance.”

  Possibly. Looks like I’ll never know what exactly I saw that night. Memory is tricky like that. It’s a miracle I remember as much as I do, and so much of it turned out to be real.

  “I’ll let them know,” I mutter, and turn away to call John Elba with this information. My phone call seems to speed up things, and Elba tells me they’re heading to the house right now.

  “Just in case,” Elba tells me, apparently concerned about getting it through my thick dreamer’s skull that evidence is probably lost and not to expect anything. “And we won’t let him walk out of jail, if we can help it.”

  Good man.

  I return to Ross’s bedside to find him listening to Cos tell a story of how she and her sister went home once to find her mom had invited friends for a party that lasted into the morning hours. They ate all the food, and took the girls’ beds, so she and Sophie ended up at the neighbor’s house.

  Their dad had been locked up in his ‘studio’ painting and didn’t notice anything until he surfaced two days later to forage for food in the kitchen.

  Goddammit. I want to go back in time, grab her mom and shake her.

  Instead I settle for putting my arm around my Cosie, kiss her cheek. “I didn’t have your back then,” I tell her, “but I do now.”

  She smiles at me, and from the corner of my eye, I catch an odd expression on Ross’s face. Looks like wistfulness, and misery, and hope all rolled into one, but when I turn toward him, it’s gone, replaced by the familiar sneer we’ve all come to love and cherish.

  Not.

  “So the police arrested my old man,” he says, reaching up and punching the pillows stacked behind him into place. “Your work here is done. Go home.”

  That’s all I wanna do, but I hesitate. “You’ll be okay here?”

  “Peachy. It’s five-star service, and tomorrow I’ll be out of here. Don’t give yourself an ulcer over me, little brother.”

  Okay, he’s starting to sound like himself again. I shoot him a glare. “I’m so relieved. I’ll sleep so much better tonight.”

  Cos tugs on my hand. “Stop it. Both of you.”

  Resisting the urge to say “he started it”—because, really?—I turn to go, her hand warm in mine.

  I’m not the one who lost something today—two parents, one dead and the other one hopefully ending up in prison for life. I need to remember that. I’m going home with my girl, to my family, and if Ross doesn’t want us around, then he’s welcome to go to hell all by himself.

  Maybe that will remind him of the hell he put us through as kids and learn something from it.

  Meanwhile, I’ve dusted up all the dark corners of my mind. Fingers crossed the dreams will catch up to that and go away so I can sleep in peace with my girl from now on.

  Epilogue

  Cosima

  Two months later

  A sound wakes me up. It’s still mostly dark outside the window slats, the faint illumination from the street lamps picking out details in the room.

  Merc’s room.

  And he’s facing away from me, that broad back stiff and rippling with tension. He sl
eeps naked—these days, we both are—and I wish I could take the time to appreciate the view right now.

  But his shoulders twitch. Curling into himself, he produces another of those sounds that woke me up: a broken moan.

  Nightmare alert.

  His dreams didn’t stop, though he says they aren’t as bad as they used to be. It was wishful thinking to believe they’d stop the moment he remembered what his mind was hiding.

  Whereas mine did stop. I guess my subconscious realized he’s out of the deep water now, treading on safe ground.

  I’ve learned how to help with the nightmares over the past couple of months. Turning around, I switch on the overhead lamp, blink for a moment, blinded, and wait.

  The light sometimes helps, wakes him up or switches the dream channel.

  That’s how I think of Merc’s sleep: a broadcasting station, randomly playing different channels, though it’s mostly set on a Hitchcock horror program.

  But the light doesn’t do the trick this time.

  “Merc.” I touch his shoulder, shake him a little. “Merc, wake up!”

  He jerks, body going rigid, and I get up and walk around the bed so he can see me as he finds his way back from dreamland.

  Or memory-land. Hard to name it when the two seem to be so intertwined in his mind.

  His eyes are wide-open in the half-dark, dark with remembered fear. They slowly focus on me, click, click, zooming in, until he sees me.

  “Cos…”

  I put my arms around his naked body before he’s finished saying my name. “Here. I’m here.” He grunts, hauling me onto the bed with him so we’re tangled up together, arms around each other, one of my legs between his. “Was it a bad one?”

  He snorts.

  True, one of his bad ones would have woken both me and JC next door. But it’s a good question to ask, to help ground him.

  He tucks me closer, my head under his chin, so I can listen to his heart beat like gunfire against his ribs. “It’s getting better,” he says, his voice hoarse.

  I should get him some water, but the way he’s got me crushed to his body says I should stay. “Yeah?”

  “Less blood.” He shudders. “And the body didn’t have Ross’s face, thank fuck.”

  Oh yeah, because that was the pattern in the past two months. As if the rest wasn’t bad enough. “Good. You never told him he has a woman’s body in your dreams, did you?”

  “Don’t think he’d appreciate that,” he mumbles, and I snicker softly.

  Yeah, Ross’s sense of humor didn’t make an appearance the times I met him.

  Then again, the last time he was in the hospital with all the bad news of the world heaped on him, so there’s also that.

  I don’t know why I have a soft spot for Ross. I know he’s a bully, that he bullied Merc and his sisters. That alone should get me in a murderous rage against the guy, and it does.

  But not all the time. Sometimes I remember his face when Merc told him that his mom’s skeleton was found. Or that his dad was the one who killed her. And my rage turns to ashes.

  But I don’t think of Ross so often, because I’m busy loving Merc, and Merc is everything. Kind, affectionate, funny, sexy… loving. Look, tortured heroes may be swoon-worthy in books, but my golden boy is more lovable with every day that takes him away from the dark.

  And sexier.

  Okay, that’s a tough one to judge, since he’s so damn hot anyway, no matter what.

  As if hearing my thoughts, he pulls back to kiss me. “Sorry,” he whispers, then licks at my mouth, stopping any protest. “I’ll get better.”

  “I don’t need better.” It’s hard to break that hot kiss to say the words, but they need to be spoken. “I only need you, as you are.”

  “God.” He groans, rocks against me, hardening against my thigh. “Want you.”

  It’s like this most nights. Nightmares, and then sex.

  Can’t complain about the latter part. It’s that good, I find myself daydreaming about it at work. Admin assistant secretary at the company I first interviewed for, miracle of miracles. Kinda boring, if exhausting, but I’m also taking history classes.

  Turns out I may become an archaeologist, after all.

  Merc’s tongue thrusts into my mouth, stroking mine, and I moan, pressing my body to his, running my hands over his solid biceps, his wide ribcage, his narrow hips. His hands are all over me, too, and lingering on my ass, gripping and kneading, pressing me against his hard-on.

  He lifts my leg, opening me up and rubs his cock down my seam. I’m so incredibly wet, so sensitive down there, so painfully aroused I groan in his mouth.

  This is why we sleep naked. Well, it’s nice to cuddle together without any barrier, anyway, but this…

  He slides his hard length up and down, against my clit, between my folds, until I’m squirming and panting, almost on the brink, the pressure in my belly unbearable.

  I kiss him back hungrily, trying to tell him to hurry up and get inside me.

  But he takes his time, stroking me with his cock, his tongue fucking my mouth, nudging me back a little so he can pinch and roll my nipples until I’m arching up, caught between his body and his bed, between his mouth and hand and cock, unraveling.

  He stops before I come, tearing a whimper from my throat.

  He breaks the kiss and gives me a sexy, knowing grin. Licks the corner of my mouth. “Ready?” he murmurs.

  So ready.

  He slips the head of that big cock into me and I shiver. More whimpers fall from my lips as he shoves deeper. Every time it feels like the first, painful at first, then it turns to pleasure and an undefinable ache for the whole of him.

  He gives it to me, rolling on his back, taking me with him, so I’m on top of him, so he can push deeper, so deep I can’t take anymore.

  His hands steady me and I grip his forearms, trembling, looking down into his handsome face, his hooded eyes and bared teeth.

  He’s so still. Straining not to move, to let me adjust. His broad chest rises and falls fast, in contrast to his forced stillness, small brown nipples and golden skin wrapped over sleek muscle.

  He’s in control, and I’m shaking, impaled on his cock, my breasts aching, my pussy full, my face hot and my thighs sleek with my arousal.

  I start to move, but his hands tighten, stopping me. “What’s the magic password?”

  “God, Merc.”

  His lashes lower. He grins. “Say it.”

  No idea what he’s talking about. Instead of answering, I trail my hand down, find the base of his cock, touch where it disappears into me, and stroke the slick skin there.

  He groans deep inside his throat, his control fraying. He rocks up into me. “Oh hell, Cos…”

  And then we’re moving together, rocking, flesh slapping, his cock sliding in and out of me so unbelievably satisfying, electrifying, making me bend over and moan his name over and over.

  Maybe that’s the password? Because he suddenly sits up and rocks into me faster, harder, burying his face in my neck, crushing our bodies together, fucking me, making hard love to me until I cry out, coming in exquisite, powerful waves.

  Until he stiffens and spills his hot release inside me, panting and groaning.

  God, yes.

  If this isn’t exorcising the dreams, then I don’t know what would. Sex is strong magic, right? Who needs salt and incantations when two bodies become one and go up in fireworks?

  “Hey…” I finally whisper when I’ve mostly gotten my breath back, though the feel of his semi-hard cock still inside me distracts me way too much, “What is the magic password? For future reference.”

  “I love you,” he says simply.

  Just that.

  Life is good.

  I love living with Merc, his family, my classes, my goals for the future. They mostly revolve around being with him, but also about learning more about ancient civilizations and cultures and maybe, someday, excavating some lost city in the jungle.

  Why no
t, right? Everything’s possible. It was possible all along, but being with Merc, having his support and enthusiasm behind me is unlike anything I’ve ever had. Being with a person who loves you can change the world, unearth dreams you thought were dead and bring them back to life.

  Good dreams.

  Merc is thinking now to finish a degree in history with me and then go to the police academy. Somehow that childhood experience and the untangling of his nightmares has pushed him in that direction. Solving mysteries. Giving justice to the victims.

  He’s also considering becoming a social worker, and that tells me Ross’s tale has also affected him, even if he denies it.

  JC, his roommate, told me over a breakfast of burnt toast and strong coffee that he’s never seen Merc so happy, and that a guy like Merc deserves a girl like me.

  No idea what a girl like me is supposed to be, but I was glad for his approval. He’s fast becoming a good friend of Merc’s, and mine, too, although he won’t say much about himself and the black cloud that seems to hover over him at times. Merc says he’ll pry it out of him one day, when JC decides he trusts him enough.

  There’s one thing that saddens me in all of this: Lin says she can’t move here, not right now. She seems preoccupied about something, but whenever I ask about it, she deflects and keeps mum about it—though she did say she’s going back home for a while, home for Lin being Chicago.

  It sucks, because I’d love to have my bestie nearby, but mostly it sucks because I want to be there for her, and the distance between us isn’t so much physical as emotional. She’s closed herself up, and though I know she isn’t doing it on purpose, that she’s going through something, I wish she’d let me in.

  Of course, I’ve been so caught up in my own life lately, I don’t blame her. Maybe I’m the one who drew away without realizing it. So many things have happened, with me and Merc dating, and going at it like bunnies all the time, and chasing the story behind his dreams.

  I have a new friend: Gigi. She decided that we can be besties and took me to meet her own bestie, Sydney and her boys. Gigi calls me all the time, and where we initially only talked about Merc, and his dreams, and their family, now we chat about nothing and everything. She makes me feel like a real part of the family, and I appreciate that.