Body Tox (The Bodies duet #1)

Chapter 30

I woke up with a jolt, a scream ready to escape my lips. My head throbbed, and I felt a hardened wax in my hair.

I scrunched my nose and realized the danger around me.

Alex.

I blinked my eyes to focus, and the warm body beside me wasn’t my abusive ex. It was Asher. He was shivering and tossing in his sleep. I looked at my lap. His shirt and jacket had fallen off my shoulders when I bolted upright…he covered me?

Did I dream about the files? About Alex? I grabbed my head, the headache forming already enough to make me wince.No. It had to be real…it had to be.

Evangeline was Asher’s sister, and this creepy church was selling women and babies!

My ex had risen from the dead…?

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed crazy. I’d watched Alex die. Recorded it on my phone as I slashed his neck in a smile-like pattern using my dagger.

I watched his blood slide down his neck and drip into the puddles of water underneath him…

“Blood for blood,” I repeated out of habit, gripping my heart, unsure what to believe anymore.

I looked at Asher sleeping beside me.

Sighing, I draped his jacket over his shivering body, the clothing making him sigh in his sleep and curl up closer to me. I snorted, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of this scene.

The two serial killer assassins cuddling…

I snuck out of the makeshift bed, padding over to the jewelry box. I grabbed my phone and scrolled through search engines, punching in Alex’s name.

A flurry of obituaries flooded my screen, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I had to have imagined it. Alex was dead. Buried in the damn ground where he belonged to rot in hell for eternity.

“Fuck you,” I said to his spirit wherever it was floating. “You will never hurt me again.”

My hand went instinctively to my stomach. The empty, flat planes under my palm were a reminder of his brutality.

If my mind hadn’t tortured me enough tonight, it flashed to that night…

Alex left, and Cali ran into the room with hot towels and a sponge. Cali was always there for me. The only real friend I had. We were good for each other.

She cleaned my body from the bite marks, the bleeding gashes, the burn marks, and the slashes. She always tried to treat them as quickly as she was able, but the scars still formed. I was riddled with the marks of his abuse.

I looked away from Cali, her gentle hands gliding down my skin with the soapy cloth. Nothing was ever enough to wash his brand from my skin.

I let the tears fall. I didn’t care to try to hide them anymore from Cali, and she never judged me. Alex had left so much worse. The tears on my face didn’t matter. I tried not to flinch from Cali’s touch, and she was as light as possible, her delicate, ebony hands bringing that warmth with each glide of the cloth.

“It’s going to be okay, Coco,” she soothed, leaning her head into my shoulder and trying to put on her brave face. Coco was her nickname for me. The silly pet name always made me smile. I had ‘died’ and been reborn as Echo, but it was always Coco to Cali. Cali Grace was truly a gift I didn’t deserve. She was the doctor, therapist, and lover I needed.

Her skin was so different from his, so soft, dark, and beautiful.

Her lips were so thick and gentle.

Her voice was velvet and kind.

Everything he wasn’t, she was.

“Echo...Have you…bled?” she asked me hesitantly, running that cloth over my breasts.

I frowned. I always bled. The bucket she brought was always to wipe the blood off me, whether it was my thighs or my sides.

Alex loved to push my boundaries, torturing me in all the ways he could think of, but never once did I scream. He could take everything from me…but my voice.

Cali stopped wiping me down and swallowed, looking away.

I laced my fingers in her springy black hair, bringing her lips to mine.

“What is it, Cal?” I asked, concern written in my eyes.

“Eira...” I swallowed. The fear of hearing my true name on her lips meant something was wrong.

“Yes?” I said, desperate to know what she feared saying to me.

“You haven’t had a period for a few months,” she said softly, and my brain slowly clicked.

“I had a sample of your blood tested for HCG...You need to know the results.”

Two pink lines stared back at me on a white strip.

Bright and solid.

True, overwhelming agony overtook me.

I screamed. The sound was raspy and broken. Cali caught me in her arms, holding me as I cried harder than I had ever thought possible.

This monster…he…

“No,” I said, shaking my head on her shoulder. Her warm, sage-filled scent gave me an anchor to keep me from drowning.

“I can’t. No.” I repeated my denials over and over. Cali was there to hold me, to soothe me.

“Eira,” she said through her own tears. “We can raise this baby together. We can leave this fucking gilded cage and raise your child with the purity and kindness you have in your heart.”

I stared into her chocolate eyes, her words confusing yet so hopeful.

“I know you want to escape, Coco,” she said, determination, a hard edge to her beautiful features.

“I will get you free,” she promised. “We will get you out of here, away from him, and when you can breathe…then make your decision about the baby.”

I couldn’t even speak.

Baby…

“But we can do it, Coco,” she said, smiling sadly. “You lost your mother so soon. You can be the mother you remember, and I’ll be there. I love you.”

I loved her, too. I knew there was truth to her words. I just couldn’t comprehend what was going on.

Free? I could escape?

“Meet me at that old arcade. We can get a bus and get the fuck out of this miserable shit town.”

“But what about your father?”

She snorted.

“My father? The one forcing me to be a doctor like him when I can’t even do basic math or tell your tongue from your spleen?”

I bit my lip, her father was an overbearing douchebag, and her mother ran off before she could even talk. She pretty much lived at my house, and my father was too stupid to be able to differentiate her from the servants.

“Cali. This is crazy. It’s dangerous,” I said, holding my stomach. The knowledge there was…life there was trippy.

Cali smiled, her pearly white teeth gleaming as she leaned down and kissed me.

“No, it’s fun, which is exactly why I know you will meet me.”

With that, she ran off. Her bouncing curls disappeared in the doorway. Later that night, I met her at the old arcade. The lights were out, and a chair and rope were lying in the center.

I didn’t want to even think about what the fuck that could be used for. Maybe some teens were roleplaying? The sky’s light was a dusk color, and I used the light to navigate around the area, looking for Cali’s baby blue bug car.

I didn’t see anything until I walked to the building next to it.

Cali’s blue slug bug was parked at the back lot, and a big duffle bag was left abandoned on the ground.

I got an eerie feeling. The air felt colder suddenly.

“Cali?” I whispered, taking a few steps toward the black bag.

The car was…on.

I walked to the front passenger side and looked into the glass windows, and the keys were hanging out of the ignition. Her little Eiffel Tower keychain dangled where the air was blowing from the AC unit.

“Cali?” I said again, trying to look in the back seats. There were more bags, but not Cali.

My phone rang, and Cali’s number flashed across the screen. She was video-calling me. I clicked the answer key and screamed. Cali was beaten and tied to a chair, one that looked like the one in the arcade. I couldn’t tell where she was. She had a light swaying above her head, and her mouth was dripping with blood.

“Cali!” I shrieked, turning left and right to figure out where she was being held.

The familiar sound of a monster laughed from the phone line, spinning the camera to face his malicious smile. He was covered in blood…her blood.

I felt the tears sting my eyes.

“A little birdy told me you two love birds were running off into the sunset.” he taunted, grabbing Cali by her hair and lifting her unconscious head up to the camera.

I looked away from the screen, my hands shaking. “What do you want, Alex? Please.” I sobbed. There was zero sign of where Cali could be, and my only chance of saving her life was listening to the devil himself.

“That extra package,” he said, blood dripping off his lips. “Get rid of it. Can’t have Daddy knowing about our fun little games, can we?”

I blinked, trying to understand what he was saying.

“Open the trunk, Eira. There’s a gift from me to you. Set the phone down and get to work. If you don’t get rid of that parasite, this one,” he pointed to Cali…with a knife covered in her blood, “I will get rid of it for you. Are we clear?”

I held my mouth, my poor Cali. I didn’t even know if she was alive.

“How do I know you haven’t killed her already?” I questioned, the accusation making him smile wider.

He took the butt of the knife and smashed Cali in the face. Her shriek of pain made me cry harder.

“No!” I gripped my phone. “Stop. Cali, just hold on.”

The trunk…

I walked over to the car and pressed the button to open the trunk. The pop sound of its opening might as well have been a gunshot because it made me flinch.

“Set the phone down. And get to work. I am impatient, and I just may play my games with your little fuck friend.”

I swallowed and picked up my pace, making my way to the back of the trunk. There was a bag, and I reached my hand inside. The tears fell faster, the realization that I was holding…a hanger.

The metal bit into my hand. The cold metal made me nauseous. I threw up, the contents of my stomach emptying on the ground.

“Ew! You’re already getting sucked dry by it. Get it out, Eira. Now. Or she dies. But not before I make you watch a demonstration on how we made that nasty thing.”

The nausea threatened me again, but I held it down, trying to steal my shaking hands.

I took a deep breath, laying the camera down on the wheel outside of the car, and getting to my knees on the cold, wet pavement. The concrete bit into my skin, and I welcomed the pain. My punishment for the horror I was about to commit.

I didn’t know if I wanted this baby, but I definitely never wanted its fate to be this. There were doctors. Medicines. Wait...

“Alex, there is medicine! I will take the medicine, and it will die.”

I felt hope bloom in my chest, the chance of my baby falling asleep peacefully to go back into the beyond they came from instead of being ripped apart.

Alex was silent. The eerie quiet stretched on until I had to crawl closer, unsure it was still there.

“Stupid girl,” he tsked. “I know there’s drugs, but that wouldn’t hurt like I want it to.”

I swallowed, and that bubble of hope disintegrated before my eyes.

“Get on with it,” he barked, slicing Cali’s top off her bloodied body.

I gripped the metal in my hand, wrapping the wires around my fist like a barbed glove. The long, jagged end, the sword that would end the life of an innocent and claim my soul along with it.

If I even survived this...

“I am…sorry.”

I spoke to the little life inside me, Cali, God, and my soul.

“Hey, you okay?” I jumped out of my skin. Asher’s soft touch jerked me back to reality.

“Uh...yeah,” I said, wiping the annoying ass tears from my face, dropping my hand from my useless stomach. I couldn’t have children after that night.

My actions hadn’t even mattered that night. After I ripped my soul from my body and lay in a puddle of my blood, cradling the innocent life, Alex drove Cali to where I was.

I was so weak I could only watch as she endured the torture that Alex wanted to give her. After he finished with her, he walked over to me and stabbed me directly in my stomach where that little baby had been, twisting and scarring me for life. He took not just one life but any lives my womb could ever have created.

As I bled out on the street beside my Cali, I heard him mock me.

The words had been swirling around my nightmares every night since. “A whore like you doesn’t ever deserve to be a mother. You’re as weak as your pathetic ass mama herself was. I should have used this blade to end her pathetic life way before.”

Some homeless person had called the ambulance to save my useless life, and I hadn’t seen Alex for years after that.

“Where are you at, Little Wraith?” Asher said, trying again to pull me from my past.

“I became an assassin to escape from him,” I said out loud. My voice sounded so much like that ghost of a girl I used to know.

Asher waited for me to continue, gently rubbing my arm like Cali used to do.

“She was a good person, you know,” I said absently, tracing his fingertips. “Cali was the one person in my life that wasn’t fake.”

He looked truly remorseful.

“Echo, I am so sorry. If I could take it back, I would.”

I believed that.

The fact that an assassin was apologizing for killing. Well…the irony wasn’t lost on me.

“He made me the monster I am.” My voice sounded so small, so weak.

Asher wrapped me in his arms. The tears I didn’t realize were there fell at that moment, soaking his bare chest.

“You are not a monster, Little Wraith,” Asher said, holding me close as I cried. “You are a survivor .”

I cried harder. I didn’t survive. He took so much from me that I would never get back. Asher picked me up, setting me on that altar and kissing my tears away. I sniffled, looking up at him.

He pulled my shirt free, and I stared at him in confusion. He smiled and raised his hands to me.

“Fix these mits, would ya? I have a job to do.”

I furrowed my brow, looking down at his mangled thumbs. They were dislocated. Not thinking about it, I anchored his arm in my grip, popping the digits back into place with a masculine grunt from him and an awful popping noise.

He sighed in relief, wiggling his thumbs like he was about to have a thumb war. Without a word, he laid me down on the altar, walking over to grab a pair of needles from my jewelry box.

I didn’t speak…just watched him in curiosity.

He pulled my pants down, the jagged lines of my scars raised, and my constant reminder of the pain of each one.

“You’re not a monster,” he said, pinching the needles together and dipping the tips into what looked like a little pool of blood and ash. He brought the line of needles to my skin, marking my scars and running the needles over each and every one of them. The bite of the needles stung, and I hissed, fixated on the pain and the intrigue.

He was…covering my scars.

I watched him as he worked.

Intricate lines made the jagged marks disappear into deep patterns of the handmade ink.

I tried to see what he was doing, but the blood-red and black colors coated my legs. He moved to my side, those lines of scars covered by the bloody ink and the lines of intricate patterns under his needles.

He was tattooing an image on my body. I gasped but kept still, not wanting to ruin his work. He was sweating, and the time ticked by. I watched him for hours, my body numb with all the patterns he drew onto my skin. My flesh burned, but I had never felt more alive.

His hand began to shake, and I was getting sleepy. It had been hours of the dip, dot, drag routine. He would sterilize the needles in a cup of alcohol, and this ritual continued. Finally, when my body was black as night, the ink covering me from my thighs, side, and up toward my chest, he laid down the little pack of needles.

“You aren’t a monster,” he repeated again, his voice soft, a sound I had never heard from him.

He took a basin of water and dumped it onto my body, the smears of black washing away to form a design of a dagger.

“You are a weapon,” he said, revealing the beautiful, daggered sword on my body.

It covered each and every scar I had.

“You are a Wraith.”