He looked through the binoculars at the old hunting cabin nestled in a clearing about ten miles from where his own cabin stood. He thought he'd been mistaken when he saw smoke from the chimneys this morning, but no, someone was staying at the old Hanson place.
He had a pretty good idea who, as he watched a young frail step out on the back porch, a cub resting on one hip, another barely steady on its feet clinging to her free hand. Had to be the granddaughter, Ciarra. Victor remembered the only time he'd met her, she wasn't much bigger than the cub trying to walk at her side now. He'd smelled a mutation then, told her parents and grandfather.
He had a letter, maybe eight years old, from the old man, asking him to watch the place, watch it closely if she showed up, protect her. Victor would have done it without asking. The Old Man was one of the few he called friend, and his family into perpetuity fell into the 'almost family' category of those under his protection.
He watched her with the cubs. She kept looking over her shoulder, jumping at every noise. He let out a low growl, something was wrong. He thought about that letter, the wording of it. "If Ciarra shows up, look after her. If she is in trouble, take care of her, protect her. If it's bad, do whatever you have to do to save my girl, even if she fights you. I trust you to keep her safe, cared for, and eventually happy for the rest of her life if it comes to that. She's all I've got, and I trust her and give her to you to keep and protect."
According to the letter, and his instincts, she belonged to him now. But he needed to find out what her problem was to fix it. He grabbed his leather trench from the peg just inside the door of his own cabin.
XXXXXXXXX
Ciarra caught the glint out of the corner of her eye. She caught it again and picked up the babies and went back inside the cabin and locked the doors. She had no idea who might be watching her, but she wasn't taking any chances. She looked around the sparse interior of the cabin. It was a simple two room building with only a front and rear door. There was a small addition between the kitchen and the only bedroom, a small bathroom that ran off the well. The pump for the kitchen sink ran off the same well. There was an old hide-a-bed in the living room in front of the fire place. She was sleeping on it. Mari was sleeping on the day-bed in the bedroom and Kiana was in the port-a-crib that Emma gave her when they crossed the Canadian border.
She quickly locked both doors and put the girls in the bedroom to play. Mari found the bag of Duplos and seemed content for the moment. Kiana played in the crib.
She found her grandfather's gun, and loaded it. If it was Steve he was going to finally understand she wasn't going to take it any more. If it was someone he'd hired to get her and the girls back, well she wasn't going to let that happen either.
She waited twenty minutes, then, still carrying the gun went to the kitchen to fix a meager lunch. She was going to have to drive the fifty miles into town to get some supplies, but she was putting it off as long as she could. There was enough food for the girls for several days and it wouldn't hurt her to go hungry until she thought it was safe.
She'd just cleaned up the girls from their lunch when she heard steps on the old porch. The loud knock didn't startle her as much as it might have. She cautiously opened the door a crack. The man on the porch was intimidating, tall, wearing a black leather trench coat over a black tee and black cargo pants. His hair was long, pulled back, blonde on the ends as if he spent most of his time out doors. The tail was pulled over his shoulder and she could tell it had a lot of natural curl. His eyes were a hard steel grey, and his old fashioned sideburns were so thick they almost made a beard.
"Can I help you?" She asked through the crack in the door.
"You're Ciarra Hanson, right?" His voice was deep and gravely as if from little use, but she heard laughter in it as well.
"Ciarra Tyler now." She couldn't keep the disgust from her voice at her last name.
"I'm your neighbor, and I hold a trapping lease on this place." She opened the door just a little more. He moved so fast she just fell back as he pushed the door open. She brought the gun up and pointed it at him from her spot on the floor. He stood there and laughed.
"Damn, frail, I'll admit ya tool me by surprise there, didn't expect the gun." He held out a hand with long claw-like nails to help her to her feet. "Somethin's got ya jumpier than a rabbit in a coyote's den."
"You're Victor Creed, the guy who looked after the place for Papaw?" She asked climbing awkwardly to her feet while keeping the gun trained on him.
"Yes ma'am." He was leaning against the door jam as she dusted herself off with one hand. She looked sheepishly at the gun, and leaned it against the wall.
"Sorry about that..." She started.
"Probably a good idea." He pushed off the door with a shoulder and filled the room. She stepped back and allowed him in. Somehow she didn't think her Papaw's old 410 was going to do her any good.
"Two girls, huh?" He asked glancing into the bedroom. "Where's their father?"
"Not here." She heard the hate in her own voice and knew he'd catch it. "I left him."
"He what's got ya jumpin?" He was going through the kitchen shelves now.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Frail, I don't give a shit if you want to, you're gonna." He growled at her. "The Old Man told me ta take care of you if you came up here, and that's what I'm gonna do, but I need ta know what I'm takin care of." This time he was digging in the refrigerator.
"It's not any of your business, I can take care of me and the girls." She said, with more bravado than she really felt. He was bigger than Steve, but somehow she was far less afraid of the man in her kitchen.
He just glared at her, grabbed one of the old dining chairs, twirled it on one leg until the back was to the table and straddled it. He pulled a dirty scrap of paper out of the pocket of his coat, and a short pencil with a ragged eraser.
"Food. Cleaning supplies. Decent bedding. Kid stuff. Firewood. Roof needs fixed over the kitchen. Rat bait. Refill propane tank." He said each item as he wrote it down. She cringed. She had a small amount of cash Emma had given her, or what was left of it.
"I know there's problems with the place, I'll fix it up as I can." She said, defiantly.
"Shut up, Frail." He snarled. He got up and started for the door. "Start talkin."
"You really know how to confuse a girl." She grumbled. His sudden roaring laughter startled her. His sudden swing, catching her around her middle and dumping her, gently, on the couch startled her more.
"Feisty. I like that." He growled as he leaned over her, pinning her in place. "Start talkin, I'm not sayin it again."
"I really don't know..." He ran one of his clawed fingers down her cheek, the strange caress was her undoing. No one had touched her, not with any concern or gentleness since her parents died. She couldn't stop the tears.
"AH. SHIT!" He growled. She heard him pacing, muttering under his breath. "...stupid frails and their stupid waterworks...don't solve anything...fuck, I don't need this shit..." Finally he turned back to her. "Ciarra, shut it off, we need ta talk, ta think, not sit and boohoo about it." He roared.
She hiccupped and looked up at him. "You don't have to do anything..." She started.
"BULLSHIT! The Old Man told me ta take care of you, made me promise, and I always keep my word so just tell me who the fuck I have to kill so this shit will stop."
Somehow she didn't think it was a figure of speech. She tried to remember anything her grandfather told her about his grumpy neighbor. The only thing that stuck in her mind was a warning, when she was a kid, about 'staying close to the cabin, Victor didn't like kids much.'
She suddenly wanted to tell someone about the hell she'd been living in the last year.
"I met Steve when I was sixteen; right after Mom and Dad died in the crash. Papaw died the year before and I really didn't have anyone else in town to look after me. The state took everything, locked it up in a trust fund that I couldn't touch until I was twenty-one. They put me in a foster home, but that didn't go so well. I ran away and got a job at a little diner, waiting tables. I slept in back until I could save enough money to rent a shithole apartment." He just glared, then walked to the table and grabbed the chair he'd sat in to make his list. He carried it over to the fireplace and sat down.
"Steve came into the diner one day, just out of college. Engineering, got a job with one of the companies in town. He was nice. Big tipper. Came in for two years, always sat in my section. I never had time to date, but he kept asking. He'd order dinner for two and have me take my breaks with him as a date. One day, he started asking me to marry him, after I graduated. I kept saying I didn't think it was a good idea, but he didn't give up. I was working on the grill in back when it happened, I burned my hand, and it healed right up. The owner was there and he had a fit. Katie, the manager didn't want to fire me but he gave her no other option. Suddenly marrying a nice guy looked like an option."
"You were eighteen?"
"Yeah, one week before school finished. We got married that summer. Steve kept promising me we'd save for college and I could go, but then I got pregnant with Mari and that had to wait. I was nineteen when she was born, and started planning for college again, looking for a nanny. Steve was making good money at work so it wasn't something that would have been hard for us to do. Three months later I was pregnant with Kiana."
"He wasn't using protection? What about the pill?" He was growling again.
"We were using protection, condoms, and the pill doesn't work on me, my mutation I guess. I heal, most meds won't work on me." He just nodded. "After she was born, that's when things changed. Suddenly I couldn't do anything right. It was my fault she was a girl when he wanted a boy. That's when he started hitting me. No one believed me because of my mutation. I wasn't allowed to drive, I couldn't leave the house without him. Then his parents showed up. They never even looked at, or spoke to me, and the girls, they ignored them completely."
She shuddered remembering the cold way her mother-in-law had looked at her and the girls, weighing them as if to see how much they were worth.
"His mother took Kiana and I to her three month checkup. While I was gone, he and his dad did some remodeling to our bedroom. When I got home, his parents packed up and left. That night, I realized just how sick he really was. He wanted me for my mutation...so he could do things that would kill someone else, and get away with them. He tied me up, hung me by a hook he'd installed in the ceiling, my ankles were tied to two D rings he'd installed in the floor. I'd always wondered why he'd wanted tile for the bedroom, and when he picked up the fake tile and exposed the drain in the floor I knew I was in trouble."
"Sounds a little elaborate, if you ask me." Victor said with a shrug. "Sounds like the bed would have been easier."
"He'd have had to buy a new mattress every night if he did that." She said simply. Victor glared, but gestured her to continue.
"Steve pulled out a knife, and started cutting, right below my sternum and all the way down to my hip bone. He'd hold the skin separated so it couldn't heal. When he finally had me cut open he used some kind of clamp to pin my skin open." She could feel the tears in her eyes as she relived the pain again, just because she healed didn't mean she didn't feel the pain, or the pain of the healing as it tried to work but couldn't. "He poked around in my insides. He cut something out, an ovary I think, and yelled that when the new one grew back he'd get his son. He sat there watching, stroking himself with blood soaked hands, until he thought I'd healed. Then he raped me."
She watched as he forced back a gag. The big bad trapper was disgusted by what she was.
"He let me down, unclamped my skin and told me to clean up the mess before I came to bed." She shuddered, remembering having to wipe her own blood off the floor. "He did this every night for months. After a while he got bored with it, and started doing other things. He'd cut out organs and cut pieces off of them, and eat them, or force me to."
"Enough." Victor roared. "Where is the bastard. I want to rip his guts out."
"Wisconsin. He can't come to Canada, that's why we ran here. He's got warrants out for his arrest up here, under a different name, for rape and murder when he was a teenager. I didn't find out until after I left."
"How'd you escape?"
"He had an out of town job, and all the pain got the attention of one of my friends from before my parents died, Emma Frost. She set up a power outage so the cameras he set up in the house wouldn't work, and helped me get the girls across the border."
"Frost is a bitch, but for once, I owe her something." Victor muttered. "How'd you meet her?"
"I ran away from home when my mutation started developing. Ended up at Salem...Emma and Betsy saved my sanity, and my life."
"Why'd she wait so long to get you out?"
"She didn't. She hadn't contacted me for several months before he started, and when he started looking at the girls, and I could tell he was thinking they might be like me, I reached out to her. He couldn't stop a telepath from reaching me, or me reaching for her."
"Good call."
"I just want to raise the girls in peace, away from him and his parents." She said softly.
"You will." He stood up, and put the chair back next to the table. "I'm going into town to get some supplies. If he can't come across the border, or is afraid to, that gives ya time."
"Time for what?"
"A divorce, for one. Custody for another. I don't suppose you have any evidence to back any of this up?"
"I grabbed his back up tapes from the security cameras. I don't know what's on them" She said.
"I'll get those later. Right now, you need food for you and the cubs." He turned and walked out the door. "Lock it behind me, and keep the gun loaded. Won't keep me out but probably anyone else it will."
XXXXXXXXXXX
He stopped on the way to his truck, but out of sight of the cabin and bent over, the contents of his stomach finally, violently, leaving his body. He'd never heard of anything quite that depraved, and he was an expert. Hell her soon to be ex-husband, soon to be dead ex-husband, could teach him a thing or two about torture.