Someone Who Loves You: SKULL Book Two

Part One: Jace & Riley Prologue: May 29, 2006, Argent, New Mexico     SOMETHING was wrong.     Jace Corvino stood in the kitchen, staring at the broken dishes, the blood on the counter and floor. The trash bin had been turned over while the fridge stood wide open. Edging forward, not touching anything, he saw a broken broom near the laundry room door.  On feet that felt like lead, he kept moving, finding more blood, more broken things.     Behind him, his twin, Jordan, called for their mother. A pang of fear gripped him at the sights before him, at the thought of their father finally snapping. Having done something very heinous. He swallowed the hard lump in his throat.     “Mom!” Jordan called “Mom, answer me!”     Jace and Jordan had planned on getting their mother out of that house. To get Sela somewhere safe and away from Lazarus, their father. Somewhere far away… where he couldn’t find her. They had set it all up; a nice new apartment for her in Albuquerque. A safe place for her before they headed to boot camp in San Diego.       Unfortunately, Lazarus had discovered their plans. He had cancelled the apartment, and sworn Sela would not leave him… ever.     Still, the twins wanted to get her away from him. And she was still willing. It was just Lazarus.  He was the obstacle.     Jace looked up when he saw movement through the window near the back door. There, in the large shed in the backyard, was Lazarus, pacing madly. With a knife – a very large knife – in his hand.     “No, no, no, no…” Jace breathed, opening the back door. What was Lazarus doing?  He stepped out the door and stopped.  Suddenly aware of his palms being sweaty and his nerves sending shock waves through his body, he realized Lazarus had literally gone mad.     What is he doing?     Jordan was now standing behind him.  “Oh, God…” he gasped  “Is-Is she in there?”     Jace didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Wouldn’t think about what might be. He just forced his feet to move forward. To the shed. The distance was no more than fifty feet, at the most, from the house. Yet to Jace, it felt as if it took hours to get there. Mom, are you okay?     The double doors of the shed stood open, framing Lazarus as he paced angrily, muttering furiously.  The man was beyond being troubled.  He was insane.     Oh God… what happened?     Jace stopped abruptly.     The sight before him seared his eyes, burned his brain  “No,” he whispered  “Mom.”     The sight of Sela strapped to the worktable inside the shed, cut and bleeding, made Jace feel like his heart and lungs were in a vice.  And that look on her face. She was looking right at him.  But, in an instant, he knew, she was no longer seeing anything.       He froze.     Lazarus had not only become unhinged, but he had killed his wife as well.     “Mom?” Jordan was beside Jace, standing there, taking in the scene. Trying to comprehend.  “Mom?” he choked out.     “Mommy can’t hear you anymore,” Lazarus snarled, whipping around to face his sons.     Jace just stood there for long seconds, staring. He wasn’t even sure what he was seeing, or trying to grasp. Then, the next thing he knew, Jordan was screaming, and lunging at Lazarus.     Lazarus just let out a harsh laugh and backhanded Jordan with little effort. Laughing some more, he watched as Jordan’s head hit the wooden block nearby as he stumbled. A wound opened up on his forehead, red seeped out.     Still trying to fathom what was being seen, Jace watched in horror as Lazarus jabbed that knife into Jordan’s side.  A small groan escaped his brother’s lips as he doubled over.     “p***y…” Lazarus spat. “I have p*****s for sons!”     Jordan still groaned, trying to stand. And that was when something in Jace snapped, blew wide open. Something primal and full of rage.  He’d not felt that kind of anger before, and it bloomed in his gut like a white-hot heat. Seeing red didn’t even begin to describe what he was feeling.     No one hurts my brother! Not even me!     Jace was standing there, fists balled up, his body shaking from the intense fury welling up inside.      Lazarus was too focused on Jordan to notice  that Jace was slowly moving toward him, a wrathful look on his face. When Jace let out a scream of anger that erupted from his throat, the older man was taken by surprise.     “You goddamned asswipe of a human!” he shouted as he charged at Lazarus.     Lazarus started laughing, cruelly. “Now you become a man?”  He grabbed a two by four from nearby and swung. It hit his nineteen year old son right on the side of the neck.     Jace’s eyes and head burst with flashes of pain, not to mention his neck. Trying desperately to focus his eyes, he spotted a shovel and grabbed it. Head still spinning, he swung, landing a blow to his father’s jaw.     Lazarus responded by punching his son in the face.     Everything went black.     Jace quickly jerked awake.     He found himself in a… cage?     Seriously?  A f*****g cage?     “I have p*****s for sons!” Lazarus was shouting. “Goddamned p*****s!”     His eyes focused on the figure before him Jordan, tied to a chair, stripped of his shirt.  Jace could now see the gaping wound in Jordan’s side, along with other, smaller cuts decorating his chest.      Jordan let out a groan when Lazarus kicked the chair. That was when a new wave of anger pulsed through Jace’s whole being. It was horrible enough that Lazarus had killed Sela, but now he thought to kill Jordan, too? Jace would be damned if he’d let that happen, let the sonofabitch work on his brother.  He needed to get Jordan and himself away from there.     Lazarus was moving behind Jordan, muttering, laughing, like the deranged jerk he had become. Knife in his hand, gracefully skinning Jordan’s back.     f**k. He is unstable! He’s a f*****g lunatic!     Jace kicked at the cage. He’d get out damn it, one way or another.  “Let me out, you f*****g piece of s**t!”     Lazarus’ head snapped up, maniacal eyes focused on him. “No.” The word had a sinister tone to it. Deadly. “You, my boy, are going to watch me carve up your f*****g brother, piece by f*****g piece. Watch as he begs, cries for his life. And, by the time I am done with him, you’ll be just like me, a f*****g animal.”     Having said that, the knife began to carve into Jordan’s back.     The howl that Jordan’s throat emitted made a nasty chill crawl up Jace’s spine.  It then settled into a low, moaning sob, which didn’t stop when Lazarus made another cut. Jordan’s face distorted into a horrific expression of pain, fear and anger.  His bleary eyes locked with his brother’s.  Help me…     Jace could feel that primal fury in his core. Burning. Searing his soul. Maybe he couldn’t help his mother, but there was no way he was going to let Lazarus take Jordan. He raised his foot and began to kick at the cage door. The metal connected with the rubber of his high top shoe as he slammed his foot against it again and again. “Asshole,” he muttered, eyeing his jerk of a father. He braced himself on the floor of the small prison, then pounded both feet into the cage door until the lock snapped.     Lazarus looked up when the cage flew open “You f*****g piss-ant!” he hollered. He stepped around Jordan, stalking toward Jace with the knife fisted in his hand. He took a jab at his son, who dodged the attack.     That slow burn of the primal rage erupted inside him, blazed in his eyes. Jace knew nothing else, felt nothing else. All he knew was, he needed to get Jordan to safety. He found a rubber mallet within reach, palmed it and stalked toward the man who was his father.     He swung it and swung again.     The mallet smacked the side of Lazarus’ head and he stumbled. Blood flew as Jace brought the mallet back for another hit, but stopped when he saw that the man had collapsed near the workbench and the twins’ dead mother. The older man didn’t move.     Jace dropped the mallet, was in a flurry of motion, running to Jordan.  Freeing his twin’s wrist and ankles, he pulled him up from the chair. Slinging one of Jordan’s arms around his shoulder, Jace walked him out of the shed. They got to the back porch, and he sat his brother down, checking for signs Jordan was still alive. Breathing a sigh of relief when his twin moaned, he turned back to see Lazarus, struggling to stand up.       “It’s okay, Jord,” Jace said. “I’ll get us out of here.”     “Piss-ant!” Lazarus screamed as he faced the nineteen year old. “You are nothing!  Nothing, you hear me? Nothing but a mealy little piss-ant!”  A cackle escaped from the man’s lips “A f*****g piss-ant of a man!”     Jace’s jaw set as he pulled off his over-shirt and tried to staunch the bleeding of Jordan’s knife wounds. “C’mon, Jord, don’t you punk out on me now.”     Lazarus stepped out of the shed, sneering “Your brother is nothing but a f*****g mama’s boy! So are you!”     You bastard…     That one remark, of all the ones his father had spouted off so far, that one took the f*****g cake. And the barrel of icing that went with it. Jace stood, rolled his shoulders back, and frowned. You motherfucking….     “J-Jace…” Jordan’s voice was low, pain filled. He coughed. “D-Don’t…”     He looked down at his mirror twin, that blood soaking his hair. He then turned eyes to Lazarus who, by now, was ranting, mostly in gibberish. Jace didn’t care. That fury had long past bloomed in his core. It now washed over him in a wave that threatened to drown him.  It made him shake.  And it made him want to kill Lazarus. To punish him.     Panting, uncuring his fists, taking a step off the porch, went toward Lazarus. “You asswipe,” he said in a voice too calm, too bland, but oh, so dangerous. “You dare say that?”  His eyes were hazel steel that bore into those of his father. “f**k you, you bastard! You killed your wife!”     Lazarus let out another deranged laugh. “You think I care, boy? She was just like the others!”     “Others?” Jace asked. “What others?”     Lazarus laughed again. A laugh that chilled Jace’s blood. “All those whores. Spreading their legs for anyone.” He pointed at Jace. “You should thank me... that little slut Melissa won’t be bothering you again.”     Jace’s mouth thinned, nostrils flared. “You... you...”      “That’s right, boy! I killed her. And your b***h of a mother caught me!” An evil grin plastered itself across Lazarus’ face. “She had to die...”     The hate that boiled in Jace made him curl his fingers around the hammer that lay nearby.     “It’s your fault you know,” Lazarus snickered. “If you hadn’t complained about her to me, I wouldn’t have known.”     Jace huffed loudly, tried to rein in his anger. “Don’t…”     Nope. Not happening.     “Don’t what, boy?” That chilling laugh again. “She was just a little slut anyway.” He eyed his son. “Hell, I’ll even bet your pretty little girlfriend isn’t so innocent.”   He laughed loudly then. “I wonder… would Riley be game for my type of fun?”