Royal Stripper

by Sienna Valentine

  I heard the bathroom door open and looked over to see Slade, still damp and with a towel wreathed around his narrow waist. He grinned as he looked me over—I’d thrown the covers off and my breasts were exposed, not to mention it was a little chilly in here.

  “Now that’s what I like to see,” he murmured, letting his towel drop. I sat up as he climbed onto the bed beside me, snaking his hand up to cup one of my breasts, but he stopped when he saw the look in my eyes. I thought I saw a flash of fear cross his face. “You’re having regrets again, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head so hard I thought my brains would come spilling out my ears. “No, it isn’t that. At all. I just got a call from Kellan. He sounded… weird.”

  “Kellan’s a junkie,” Slade said, as if that was the only explanation my statement warranted. When I shot him another, more withering look, he shrugged. “Okay. Weird how?”

  “Well, you’re right. He was high. He must have been. Or he was coming down. Either way, he was babbling about being a failure.” I was reminded instantly of Slade’s confession the previous night. “I think he’s feeling pretty guilty. He said…” My throat tightened. “He said he wasn’t coming home this time, Slade.”

  Slade frowned. He released my breast and sat up straighter, his brow furrowed pensively. “What exactly did he say, Iris?”

  His tone worried me even more than I already was. Fuck, my nerves were frayed. “He talked about our childhood some, how Dad left. Then he said he was sorry for being a fuck-up and that he was going to stay away for good this time. That he was no one, and we were all better off without him.” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Almost sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

  Slade didn’t answer. His brows had knit together, casting shadows over his eyes. “What is it?” I asked him.

  “We’ve got to go find Kellan,” he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and searching for his boxer briefs. “Right now. You said you knew where he was, right? Or at least, you thought you did?”

  Dread slithered through my veins, icy and heart-stopping. I felt like my stomach had fallen out at my feet—like I was plunging into the Arctic Ocean from a great and terrible height. “Slade, talk to me. What’s going on?”

  “Those things Kellan said,” he answered, pulling up his jeans, “I’ve heard them before, from junkies, from straight-edge guys, hell, even from new moms with the ‘baby blues.’ It never ends well.” When I just stared at him, he pressed his lips into a grim line. “I don’t mean to scare you, Iris, but that’s the kind of shit people say when they’re gearing up to kill themselves.”

  My head spun. Slade might as well have punched me right in the gut. “No… no, that’s not possible. Kellan wouldn’t do that to us. To me. He…”

  Slade strode to my side of the bed and grabbed my hands, yanking me to my feet. As I looked up at him through my tangled hair, he cupped my face and said, “He’s in pain, and he’s stubborn, and he’s stupid, and I’ve seen it too many times. I’ve seen it go right, I’ve seen it go wrong, and no matter the case, I end up talking to some grief-stricken family who just lost one of the most precious souls they’ve ever known. So we need to find your brother, Iris. Now.”

  Oh, God. Slade was right. In my heart, I knew he was. I pulled away from him and grabbed my clothes, my hands shaking, my stomach lurching so hard I thought I would be sick. All I could see was Kellan’s face, his sweet eyes, his dumb, lopsided smile. Only this time, when I conjured his image in my mind, he was lying on a gurney in the county morgue.

  Chapter 14

  Slade

  “You shouldn’t be going in there with me,” I told Iris as we sped toward Hawthorne Grove in my new rental car. I paid very little attention to traffic laws as we went, blowing through stops signs whenever I thought I could get away with it. I wasn’t about to let some stupid traffic cop stop me from saving the only brother I had. “These junkies aren’t afraid to hurt people. One of them pulled a knife the last time I was there.”

  “I’ll be fine, Slade,” Iris said, rolling her eyes. She dug into her purse and pulled out an oddly shaped black rectangle. With a pointed glare in my direction, she pressed down on a button on the box’s side, and a crackling arc erupted between two prongs at one of the taser’s ends. Then she shrugged. “Dad gave it to me when I went to college.”

  I started to protest again, but knew my concerns would only fall on deaf ears. If Iris planned on going in there with me, then there was nothing I could do to stop her. Admittedly, that stubbornness of hers only served to turn me on.

  “So, what’re you supposed to defend yourself with if things get bad?” she asked, throwing a skeptical side-eye my way. “You don’t look like you brought a gun, or even a knife.”

  “I took boxing in college,” I said, trying to brush the subject off.

  “Well I’m sure they’ll be very intimidated with your Harvard boxing cred,” she said, shaking her head with a wry smile.

  “When you put it like that, sure, it sounds stupid,” I shot back, trying to defend my pride. “Don’t worry about me, okay? I’ve been in more than a few fights.”

  “Whatever you say,” Iris replied, clicking down on the taser’s button to drive the point home. Truth be told, between her and a junkie, I had my money on Iris.

  The two of us pulled into the familiar driveway of 204 Baxter Street, where only a few days ago, Kellan had been hiding out with God knows how many other strung-out junkies for company. We hoped that Kellan had decided that this place was as good as any to commit suicide—we could only pray that we had gotten here in time.

  “It’s dark as hell in there,” I said, putting the car in park and switching off my headlights. “I have no clue just how many there are, but I know we’re definitely outnumbered. Keep your taser stowed until you need it. We don’t need some twitchy meth-head jumping the gun and getting you hurt.”

  “Works for me,” Iris said as she pushed open the passenger side door and stepped out. “I just hope Kellan’s still here.”

  The inside of the foreclosure was exactly how I’d left it before, only with slightly more trash and a much stronger smell of shit and piss. All that had really changed since the other day was the arrangement of all the addicts, some of whom were much more alert than they had been last time I’d stopped by.

  “Kellan?” Iris called, looking around the room desperately in hopes of seeing if any of the sprawled out men on the floor looked like her brother. “Kellan where are you?”

  “Kellan!” I called, my voice much louder than Iris’, startling a few more junkies awake from their drug-induced stupor.

  From a corner of the room, I heard a high, nervous laugh that didn’t sound anything at all like our brother. I turned my gaze toward the sound, finding a thin, scraggly looking man sitting on a mat with a pipe in his hand. He was staring right at me.

  “Your friend Kellan’s not here anymore, pretty boy,” the junkie said, his hyena-like laugh permeating every syllable. “He left a long time ago, said he had somewhere really special to be.”

  “Where did he go?” I asked, drawing myself up as much as possible. “Tell me, or I’m going to make your life hell.”

  “I don’t think I will,” the junkie laughed again, biting down on his lip as he bounced in a kind of manic excitement. “And you ain’t so tough that you can take us all down. Only reason we let you slide on by is because you and our boy Kellan were tight… once—but now Kellan ain’t here, is he?”

  “Slade! Watch out!” Iris called, but it was too late. I felt something hard come down on the back of my neck, nearly dropping me right to my knees. Everything seemed to close in for a moment, the edges of my vision darkening as my world started to shrink.

  Pull yourself together, I thought, trying to push through the oncoming blackout and get back onto my feet.

  I heard the sound of garbage rustling behind me, as threatening as a rattlesnake’s tail, as someone moved for another hit. I ducked to the side and na
rrowly missed another strike from the wooden baseball bat that had struck me before. I moved quickly, grabbing the bat and yanking it out of the addict’s grip while shoving the butt of it up into his stomach.

  The junkie let out a strangled cry as he fell onto his side, grabbing at his gut. I got up as fast as I could, taking the bat and using it to swing into the side of another junkie that ran toward me, this one with a piece of broken glass in hand.

  Behind me I heard the crackling sounds of Iris’s taser, followed shortly after by the shrill squeal of yet another one of the addicts. I turned toward her, making sure that she wasn’t in too much trouble before I heard more garbage moving next to me, signaling another attack.

  I turned my head to get a look at my attacker, only to find a scrawny fist sailing right toward my eye.

  I snarled, dropping my bat out of reflex as I stumbled back a step. For a bunch of scrawny bastards, they sure could throw a punch. I’d seen more than my share of junkies “hulking out” in the ER, but I’d never had to deal with being on the receiving end of it. It wasn’t fun. Suddenly, I didn’t envy EMS one bit.

  When I could finally see which of them had hit me, I recognized him immediately as the hyena-looking bastard who’d taunted me before. The only thing that came to my mind as I stared into his gleeful, beady eyes was that this bastard knew exactly where Kellan was.

  All the while, I heard the sounds of Iris’ taser and screams from another two of the junkies.

  “Hey!” I shouted, a loud, barking sound that made the hyena man jump and turn toward me. “Where’s my brother, you piece of shit?”

  I advanced toward him, my fists up and ready to go at him, only to watch the scrawny bastard collapse in on himself, falling to the floor, his hands over his head in a pathetic attempt to stave off whatever assault I intended to deal out on him. It was almost comical.

  It took me a moment to realize how quiet the room had gotten all of a sudden. I glanced over my shoulder, hoping to God that Iris hadn’t gotten herself hurt too bad.

  “Iris?” I called, kneeling down to pick up the baseball bat I’d dropped moments before. “Are you all right?”

  For a moment there was only silence, the sounds of the still-sleeping junkies and groaning addicts that had made the mistake of trying to take me on the only aberrations in an otherwise quiet room. My heart skipped a beat and my stomach clenched as I waited with bated breath for some kind of sign from her.

  “I’m fine,” she called at last, the sound of garbage and refuse being kicked aside reaching me from the entryway. I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw her come to my side. “I almost got ran out the door. But I’m all right. I was just a little out of breath.”

  Aside from her clothes and hair being a little ruffled, the only sign that Iris had been in any trouble was a nasty-looking cut on her otherwise perfect cheek. I winced as I saw it, drawing her gaze away from the junkie on the floor.

  “It’s fine,” she said, shrugging. “You should see the other guy.”

  The two of us turned our attention back to our only remaining source of information. I knelt down and grabbed the scrawny piece of crap by the scruff of his shirt and lifted his underweight body into the air before pushing him up against a peeling wall.

  “I asked you a question before,” I growled, putting his face level with mine. “Where is Kellan?”

  “Okay! Okay!” he squeaked, flailing like a panicked mouse. “He said he wanted to go to that old nursing home—the one where they kept all the sick people who was about to kick it.”

  “A hospice center?” I asked.

  “Yeah! Yeah!” the junkie said, his manic excitement returning alongside his desperate desire not to be hurt. “The old one that they don’t put people in no more. He said that he wanted to go there for some special reason. Said it was meaningful, or some shit. Anyway, here’s there.”

  “You know it?” I asked, turning to Iris. “I don’t remember any abandoned hospice centers nearby.”

  The look on Iris’ face was a haunted one, as though the very thought of the place was enough to strike a nerve in a deep part of her psyche.

  “Yeah,” she said after a moment of silence. “I’ve been there once, but I never thought I’d ever have to go there again.” She looked up at me. “Come on. Let’s go. And after that blow you took to the head, I think I’ll drive.”

  “Fair enough,” I muttered, rubbing the knot forming on my skull, “but that cheek needs tending to as well. You drive, and I’ll patch you up—I saw a First Aid kit in the glove box of the rental.”

  Iris grabbed my hand as we navigated the human debris field together. “Deal,” she said.

  Chapter 15

  Iris

  “This is…” Slade trailed off, looking at the abandoned building with all the realty company signs out front. “What is this?”

  I sighed through my nose. I hadn’t been here in a long time, and the place had really gone to shit over the past few years. The walls were crumbling, there was graffiti everywhere—it was a death trap. I couldn’t believe they were still trying to sell it. Better to burn the place to the ground and start all over with something new. Something better.

  I turned to Slade and offered a wan smile. “This is where our dad died,” I said.

  His face blanched and a touch of softness lit his eyes. “Oh. I didn’t know.”

  I never talked about it. Neither did Mom. The way it happened was so strange, and in some ways, just… surreal. We usually just stuck with the story that he’d walked out on us—which he had. But a couple years later, we got a call from an end-of-life care center. Dad had cancer. It was bad. And he wanted to make amends.

  Funny, people never seemed interested in doing that unless they were literally at death’s door. My father had been a jackass who’d wasted his life, and our time and affection, on a whole host of sins. He was a gambler and a cheat. A liar and an adulterer. Like one might expect, things had ended very badly between us, and when he’d finally walked out of our lives, I think we’d all felt a sense of relief on top of the grief and anger.

  But when we got that call, I wasn’t sure what to feel. What to think. Should we take a page out of his book and leave him to rot? Should we once again offer up our hearts, our forgiveness, to someone who never appreciated or deserved it?

  Mom eventually made the decision for us, and we’d piled into the car and taken a trip to see our father for the last time. I could still remember the smell of him—that cloying scent of death that hung off his gaunt, skeletal frame. He didn’t look like the fat bastard who used to let us down all the time. He looked frail and broken, weak and tired, like he was dead and just didn’t know it yet.

  The whole thing sucked, and while it left its scars on me, I was sure it had left even deeper ones on Kellan. The center had closed down about six months later, and yet whenever we were downtown, he’d ask if we could drop by it. Later, when he was old enough to go himself, he’d hang around and just… think, I guess. Just stand in the same place his father had been once before. It was really the only tangible memory my brother had of him.

  Good riddance, as far as I was concerned. But Kellan was different, or at least, he was back then. He had a big heart, and a lot of room in it for forgiveness. It seemed like those were exactly the kinds of people who got mixed up in drugs to numb the pain, and sometimes I wondered, was this where it all started? Was this where he first got a taste?

  “I’ll explain later,” I said to Slade, quickly scaling the chain link fence surrounding the property. Slade nodded and came after me. We both knew we had way more important things to do.

  The front door to the center was, predictably, unlocked. We both went through, Slade first—neither of us had any idea of what to expect in here, and judging by how things had gone back at Kellan’s drug den, we had to stay on our guard. My brother might not be the only one here. Abandoned shitholes tended to attract drug addicts, I’d noticed.

  Slade guided me around a patch of collap
sed ceiling and squinted up into the hole. Motes of asbestos fluttered through the air as the building settled. He shook his head. “Well, if he doesn’t kill himself, that stuff will get him just as well.” When he saw my look, he winced. “Sorry. I just…”

  “I know,” I said. For Slade, being an asshole was pure reflex, a defense mechanism. He was just as worried as I was. It was weird—I was starting to take comfort in him being a prick. It let me know how he was really feeling. “Come on, the room we want is this way.”

  We walked down one of the long halls flanked on either side by doors to what once were patient rooms. My stomach turned with each door we passed. Even though I’d only been here once, I could still remember that trip like it was yesterday: the bright, fluorescent lights buzzing and blinking above our heads; Mom’s pale, grim face, drawn taut around her lips; the orderlies and nurses meandering through the halls, not a single one of them in a rush—and why would they be, when your business is waiting for death?—and finally, the door we’d taken to Dad’s room, where we’d seen the waxy, jaundiced corpse trying to pass itself off as our father. Standing in front of it now gave me a chill that bit into my bones.