VEILED Complete Boxed Set

by Victoria Knight

  And the men... Well. He was built like the side of a slab of granite. Even when he wore his windbreaker—which he was today—the muscles of his chest were clearly defined. His shoulders were powerful; he stood six foot two on legs that looked as if they could scale the side of a mountain with ease. In short, he was the kind of man other guys wanted to challenge. He was not the sort to look for trouble, but when it came to him - let's just say he did not indulge idiots and end it there.

  The man patted his pockets as he neared his car. He had parked in the deserted lot of a movie theater that had gone under some years ago, as was his habit; almost no one else used it, all other places of business having their own lots and all. Then there were the potholes that mired the entire space - terrible for a car's tires. Still, he found it a small price to pay for the privacy the lot offered.

  A loud bang later, the man tacked a "usually" to his previous thought. The lot usually offered privacy. Namely, when random drunks did not come crashing out of Randy’s Roost, Red Creek’s infamous bar. It was one of the only places that still flourished in the dead part of town - which was only logical, given the type of people who lived around the place. Anyone with any prospects had long moved out - if not out of town, then at least to a more central location. The rest were either trash or too poor to do anything about living next to trash. The latter, the man sympathized with. Especially when one of that first type almost collided with him, the stink of cheap alcohol none-too-pleasant to his sharp senses. The drunken man caught his balance against the side of Randy’s Roost, knees almost buckling beneath him. Then he looked up at the massive man in front of him.

  “I’ll be damned,” the drunk said. “As I live and breathe and drink my ass off, if it ain’t Mr. Benton. Ha!”

  Saul Benton could not decide if the drunkard was truly astonished to see him or if he was having a bit of inebriated fun. Saul had seen the man around before and knew enough about him to know that he should just keep walking to his car in order to avoid trouble. His name was Lester Dobbs and while he was not the only town drunk, he was certainly on the ballot to fill the position.

  The last thing Saul needed was a confrontation with a belligerent town drunk. So he carried on towards his car with his bag of groceries still held in one gigantic arm. From behind him, he could hear Lester Dobbs mumbling something derogatory under his breath.

  “That’s right,” Lester said, raising his voice. “The giant recluse is too good to hang with the common folks. Just as well you fucking freak…keep walking. Get out of here. You stay around here, things might go bad for you.”

  Confrontation may be the last thing Saul needed, but he sure as hell was starting to want just that. His temper often got the best of him, and he could feel hooks digging into him with each word that came out of Lester’s mouth. Saul walked faster as he approached his car, hoping he could get into it before the drunk said anything that might send him into rage.

  Predictably, Lester went on. Saul could not recall ever speaking a word to the man in his life but he was still ranting on and on as if they had been mortal enemies since the womb.

  And then, of course, Lester went too far.

  “Run back to the woods before I string you up like they did your daddy. Or hell, come on into the bar and have a beer. You can tell me the story about why he’s innoc—” Lester's voice stuttered to a stop as surely as if the man had swallowed his tongue. The image of a man of Saul's stature charging forward like a bull toward a matador would have sent better men then the sorry drunk mute with fright.

  Careful, something in Saul whispered even as he dashed down the street and toward Lester like a man possessed, that dumb fucker is not worth exposure. At the same time, a bigger part of him wondered if anyone would really miss the drunk man, were he to disappear. A few people would probably be glad. He would certainly be glad.

  A bit of that particular train of thought probably showed in his eyes as he glared down at Lester. The drunk had to tilt his head up in order to meet his eyes - not that he did, too drunk to really focus on anything.

  “Oh,” Lester said. “Did I say something to upset you?”

  Saul didn’t know if Lester was just very drunk or very stupid (he suspected a bit of both). Lester himself was not a small man. The majority of other bar patrons would likely back down from him in a bar fight. He had muscle that had been built by at least thirty years of manual labor. The steely glint in his eyes also served as a warning: It showed that Lester was stubborn. It showed that no matter how outgunned he was, he would not back down once provoked, even if he knew the battle was lost. All in all, a brute with a chip on his shoulder.

  Seeing this, Saul finally managed to calm himself. He did not fear a fight, or this man. What he did fear was the risk of exposure, of bringing unnecessary trouble to himself and his extended family. There was no sense in adding to fifty-years' worth of rumors and speculations his family had to endure, living in Red Creek.

  So Saul said nothing. He shook his head, gave Lester an annoyed grin, and then turned his back.

  “Chicken shit,” Lester said. “Hell, at least your Daddy stood and fought. He didn’t turn away.”

  Saul would have sighed and smacked a large palm over his face, had this been a scene in a movie he was watching. As it were, it was all he could do to turn around slowly and speak instead of decking Lester smack in the middle of his ugly mug. His grip around the bag of groceries tightened; he felt the gallon of milk cool against his leg through the plastic bag. “I suggest you shut your mouth about my father.”

  For the briefest of moments, the steel in Lester’s eyes faltered. Saul could tell that the man wanted to take the words back, that he wanted to retreat into the bar and waste his life away in glasses of downgraded liquor. Which would have been preferable to what the drunk man did do: Step closer to Saul and pollute the air with his stinking breath.

  “You know," Lester began, voice deceptively mild, "For a devil worshiper, I hear he wasn’t so much on the magic spells and all.” Saul let go of the grocery bag. The milk made a dangerous sound as it collided with the hard ground; it was lost beneath the roar of blood in Saul's ears, the dark anger that took hold of him and made him lash out against the source of his frustration. Lester barely had time to register the sudden shift of mass in his immediate vicinity before he was thrown back and clear off his feet. A moment later, the darkened window of Randy's Roost was no more. Saul observed the resulting wreckage of glass and blood with grim satisfaction.

  Someone inside the bar let out a startled yell. Curses rang out not long after, the loudest and most outraged no-doubt belonging to the bar's owner. Lester merely moaned in pain.

  Saul did not stick around to hear anything else. He picked up his bag of groceries as he passed it by and quickly covered the thirty or so feet to his car. He tossed the groceries in, got behind the wheel, and started the engine. A few people had come to the broken window to look out. A few others stood at the door, their beer mugs in hand. By the time Saul had pulled his car out back out onto the street, a few of them had put the pieces together: Lester Dobbs, town drunk and shit-starter, had been shoved through the glass window of the town’s only watering hole. Saul Benton, town recluse and topic of endless rumors, speeding away. The two things combined rather well. Saul grimaced, thinking he had just made a whole lot of people very happy. Rumors about the Bentons were always a favorite topic of conversation, after all. Saul made a sharp right toward the lot's entrance, and almost groaned; another car was parked in J-Mart's lot across the street. Judging by the dumbfounded expression plastered on its driver's face - a teenager, wonderful - she had been there for a good part of the show. Saul rolled his eyes at the mixture of fear and amazement that the girl's face morphed into as the shock wore off. Teens. He kept driving, careful not to catch her eye.

  His blood still thrummed as he wound out of town and closer to the back roads that led to the place most local referred to as Benton Cabin.

  4

  As
usual, work dragged out forever for Nikki. She clocked out at six, had her usual mundane conversation with Lily about how business would pick up any day now, and then walked out to the employee lot where her shit of a car filled one of the eight parking spots.

  Nikki drove her car to the nearest J-Mart, wishing she could avoid the trip all the while. She hated grocery stores and their patrons with passion. Since she hated running out of beer even more, however, sacrifices had to be made. Thankfully, the place proved to be as dead as ever when she walked in some time later: A few people strolled along the aisles like zombies, using the rickety shopping cars as walkers more than anything else. Others rushed around, throwing groceries into their carts without any apparent care of what the items actually were - in a hurry to get home and carry out their formulaic afternoons. Families to feed, TV to watch, spouses to reject when the lights went out - that sort of idyllic life.

  Nikki ducked her head, pretending to study the label of some cheap Ramen crap she had picked up on a whim. She recognized almost every person in the damn store. The curse of small towns: You know everyone, and everyone knows you. Meaning that every person she passed as she walked to the back of J-Mart and towards the beer cooler knew about her less-than-perfect past. They had likely also distorted quite a bit of it in their own minds.

  Case and point: The Wiccan rumor. It was the latest gossip Nikki had heard about herself, and it ran along the lines of her being a witch or some such nonsense. Unlike most of the things people said about her, this one was actually a tiny bit true: She had in fact shown interest in Wicca a few years ago. Of course, she had only done so to rile up her father. The snotty looks she had gotten from the proper Baptists of Red Creek had been a pretty sweet bonus, too. Still, that had been a while ago - was there some sort of gossip lag happening or something?

  Or maybe the Wiccan thing went well with the other rumor going around - the one that made her out to be some loser drug-addict. Which was absolutely laughable, given that the last "drug" Nikki had done had been the Vicodin prescribed for her broken finger. Okay, and pot. But pot was hardly a drug, no matter how much the old biddies of Red Creek made out like it was Satan himself.

  In the end of the day, beer was the only drug worth using. And lucky for Nikki, Jim Mooney - sole proprietor of J-Mart - cared nothing about the fact that she was not of legal age to buy it.

  What else had fueled the gossip mill? Oh yes…that she had stabbed her father. That was sort of true, too. But on that story, she managed to come out as the good guy. If the people of this stupid town loathed anyone more than her, it was probably her father.

  He had been the lucky one, though. The bastard had gotten his ticket out of Red Creek - albeit in the back of a state vehicle that, from what Nikki understood, had taken him to a mental hospital in Richmond.

  Nikki hated thinking about her father. She tended to drink more when he was on her mind. It was an ironic thought to have as she paid for her beer. An old woman in line behind her gave her an accusatory look. Nikki returned it, slightly pouting to highlight the piercing in her lip. It seemed to make old women die a little inside - another reason she had decided to leave it in.

  After successfully cowing the old woman, Nikki took her beer, now in a plastic bag, and headed back outside. She walked down the sidewalk to her car and set the bag inside. She got behind the wheel but before she could start the engine, she caught sight of what appeared to be a fight-in-the-making on the other side of the street.

  Nikki recognized one of the men as Lester Dobbs. The other man—who looked too large on the streets of Red Creek to be real—was not familiar. She thought that it might be Saul Benton, the town recluse and perhaps the one resident with more rumors circulating than her, but that couldn’t be right.

  As Nikki watched the situation unfold, she became more certain that it was indeed Saul Benton. Nikki had only seen him once before; she had passed by him in J-Mart a year or so ago and had not even realized who he was until she was well out of the store. Still, Saul was not a man easily forgotten.

  This should be interesting, she thought. He never comes out. He never—

  At that moment, Saul dropped the bag of groceries he had been carrying. He gave Lester a hard shove that Nikki barely saw. She was too stupefied by the speed at which Saul had moved to pay attention to anything else. By the time she had recovered and realized what was happening, Lester had broken through the window of Randy’s Roost, hanging half in and half out of the now-empty pane.

  Nikki chuckled nervously. It was great to see Lester get his ass handed to him; the pervert had hit on her more than a few times despite being thirty years her senior. But what grabbed Nikki's attention was the power behind Saul’s shove. The effect it had on Lester was almost like the over-acted deaths in bad action movies. He’d come at least two feet off the ground before hitting the window. Sure, Saul was huge and looked like he was made of solid muscle, but still…that was ridiculous.

  By the time Nikki was able to focus on the scene before her again, Saul had already collected his bag of groceries and was running for his car. He sped out quickly while a few patrons of the bar looked on from the door and through the shattered window. Nikki kept her eyes on Saul's car, however - and then almost hyperventilated when the man caught her eyes with his. It was a fleeting glance at best, the anger Nikki saw in the man's face was more terrible than anything she had ever seen. Was it messed up that she found it hot, in a savage sort of way? If he hadn’t have been speeding away, Nikki thought she might have stared as long as she could.

  Nikki blinked the thought away and looked back to the broken window of Randy’s Roost. A few men were helping Lester out. One man was talking loudly and pointing down the street in the direction Saul had driven away.

  With a smile, Nikki headed down the street, in the opposite direction. She looked back in her rearview mirror one more time and let out a chuckle as she watched Lester Dobbs get shakily to his feet on the sidewalk.

  5

  Prompt as always, Nikki arrived at Jason’s house at eight o’clock on the dot. She had her three remaining beers with her when she knocked on his front door. Jason answered like he always did, eager but trying to hide it.

  “Come on in,” he said, ushering her inside.

  Nikki grinned at him as he turned his back. True, she wasn’t physically attracted to him, but he could be cute at times. The best part was that he was unaware of the cuteness. It almost made her wonder what he would be like in bed.

  Jason led her through his cramped one-bedroom apartment. As always, it was way neater than anything Nikki could have managed: There was no clutter, no dust, and the furniture was arranged meticulously. Nikki wondered if he was like this by nature or if he did a careful cleaning each time before she came over.

  “Okay, so I know you’re a skeptic or whatever,” Jason was saying as he led her into his bedroom. “But even you are going to freak over what I caught.”

  “What did you catch?” she asked.

  If Jason's apartment was as it always had been when Nikki came over, his bedroom was definitely not. Usually, he had on only his bedside lamp to create an awkward sort of mood lighting. She had always supposed it was “just in case” something happened between them. But tonight, the overhead was on. She hated herself a bit for being so conceited. Maybe tonight his excitement wasn’t about her, but over whatever it was that he had to show her.

  “Okay,” he said. “So you know about Deke Goode’s farm, right? How a lot of his cows have ended up dead in the last few weeks?”

  “Yes. And you told me you think it could be some new kind of cattle mutilations conducted by aliens.”

  “Well, I thought that was a possibility, but not anymore.”

  Nikki blinked; well that was new. “Why not?” she asked.

  Jason gave her a wicked grin that she wasn’t used to seeing on him. It made him look malicious in a way. It was sort of sexy, too.

  What the hell is wrong with me today, Nikki wondered. Fi
rst Saul's savagery was turning her on, now Jason was being all evil pod-man and she was up and paying attention.

  “Well, two weeks ago, I took a video camera out there—one of those woodsman hunting ones, you know?" Jason was saying. Nikki nodded him along, mentally pulling herself back into the conversation. "I set it up at the edge of the back side of the pasture so he wouldn’t see me. It’s set on a motion activation trigger. I’ve been checking it every other night for two weeks.”

  “Yeah?” Nikki promoted. Although a big part of her thought putting so much effort into shit like this was a little sad on Jason's part, she could not help being a bit intrigued.

  “Yes. And last night, it caught something. It caught something huge. It’s not a UFO but maybe even better. Well…not better than a UFO. Weirder, maybe."

  Nikki bit her bottom lip to suppress her smile. Jason was definitely more excited than usual. With every moment, it built closer and closer to a boyish excitement that wiped away that sexy grin she’d seen moments ago.

  “Ah hell, show me already. What is it?”

  He pointed to the laptop on his small desk. “Watch that video.”

  Nikki walked to the desk and took a seat. He had pulled up the computer’s factory video player. She also noticed that there was a portable drive hooked into it—probably from the trap camera he had installed out near Deke Goode’s farm.

  Nikki pressed play and was very aware of him staring hard from behind her. Sometimes when they were in this position, he’d find a reason to touch her shoulder or get close to her hair. She’d caught him smelling it from time to time. She never said anything though. So what if she didn’t feel the same about him? It was nice to be liked.