Van Helsing Rising - Helen Scott Page 0,4
damn mask means too. That he’s hiding his emotions. Which means he has emotions.
“Meat bags or not, the Prez wants to see them.”
“Phoenix--” I begin.
“Let’s unload them,” he says, cutting me off.
I study him as he runs his hand through his light brown hair. He’s so damn proud of that hair of his, left a little long on top and far too stylish-looking to fit in here. I’d tried to get him to shave his head military style like mine. I’d told him he was wasting his time, but my brother’s as stubborn as I am. Unfortunately.
He gives me a weird look. “You okay?”
I realize I’ve been staring too long and grunt, turning to unload the first cage, the one with the dead guy crammed in with a few others.
“That one looks…”
“Yeah, he died on the drive.”
“Too bad,” he says, his voice soft.
I try not to look at the dead man as we unload the cage. This is exactly what I was worried about. Phoenix is all too good at shooting assholes and slitting throats. But when it comes to dead victims, he has a tendency to take their deaths personally.
Maybe it runs in our genetics.
“You know…”
“I know.”
Damn twin-brain. Of course he knows what I’m worried about.
Striker and Crash take the cage we’ve placed on the ground without a word and carry it into the largest building on our grounds, the one with cells in the basement, where our leader is impatiently waiting.
We reach for the next cage, the one with the big guy and a couple of flesh bags.
“You seen anything about this?”
Phoenix frowns. “No…not exactly.”
“It have anything to do with your weird dreams lately?”
His frown deepens and those eyes of his reveal too much. “How do you know I’ve been having nightmares?”
Because he has been up all hours of the night, drinking coffee like it sustains him, and snapping in a way that’s more like me than him. Plus, there’s the whole jerking when people touch him thing…that always tells me he’s being tortured in his sleep.
If not in his waking hours.
But if he doesn’t want to talk about it right now, I won’t push him. Pushing him only makes it take longer to find out what’s going on with him. Stubborn ass.
We have to work a little harder to get the giant down from the back. And Crash smirks at us when he and Striker grab the next cage. “Getting out of shape?”
“No, fucking your mom keeps me fit as hell.”
He chuckles, and they head inside.
We climb back up into the truck and spot the blonde goddess. My brother and I both freeze for a long minute when her brows scrunch up in her sleep and she looks pained for a long moment, before her expression returns to normal once more.
“What do you think they were doing with her?”
I shake my head. “It can’t have been anything good.”
We move to stand over her, and I hate the way my gaze seems to cling to her face. My stomach turns and I picture her dead. I hate that the image bothers me. She’s a stranger. A meat bag who will probably be dead by morning.
Damn my weakness for beautiful women.
We’re both gentler with her cage when we carry it out of the van and set it down. Striker and Crash join us at the cage, and we all look down at her together.
“Think she’ll live?” Phoenix asks.
Striker’s face remains impassive. “We should hope she doesn’t. Whatever they did to her there, I doubt she’ll want to remember.”
They carry her inside, and we walk slowly behind them. I hate that I kind of agree with Striker. Even if it’s a shame to have such a young, beautiful woman die, we all know what it’s like to live with the ghosts of our past. And sometimes, death really is easier.
3
Dani
The first thing that makes its way to my conscious brain is the need to roll on to my side and vomit. My stomach heaves and expels the small amount of bile that has accumulated on to the floor. After which, it clenches painfully with hunger. When’s the last time I ate?
Fan-fucking-tastic.
As I move, I find that I’m not in my regular cell. The floor in here is tiled, which is definitely nicer than what those assholes usually stick me with. Most of the time it’s concrete and sometimes it’s even dirt that makes up my floor. Part of me hopes that this is just a dream, that they aren't trying