Chapter 16 – The Nameless

Sorry for the delay. My hubby had some pretty scary health issues this past week and I've been taking care of him. He's better now.

I said this at the end of 'Second Chances' but a lot of you aren't reading it (or if you are, you're not reviewing! Tsk tsk). This story won't contain expressed sexual assault, rape, murder, etc. It may be implied, alluded to, grazed over, mentioned, etc. but it won't ever be blatantly written out with all the gory details.

This chapter gets pretty dark. These missing girls weren't at a Day Spa…

JPOV

Jasper instructed everyone to get in the monstrous SUV they apparently drove to get here. I wasn't expecting a warm welcome back into their lives or anything, but Edward wasn't as accepting as the others. None of them seemed too thrilled to see me, but they weren't snarling at me either.

Doc programmed the address into the GPS and hauled ass to the house in the woods. We spent a couple of minutes going over our method of attack and forming a back-up plan in the event that Warren had help, which wasn't likely according to Edward. I hoped the planning would take longer so there wouldn't be much time for other discussions, but it turned out that it doesn't take much strategy when there were five vamps and two wolves against one psycho.

Carlisle had us positioned in the car so that I was in the third row of seats and Edward was riding shotgun. Good idea. The silence didn't linger for long before Edward turned around in his seat and glared at me. Carlisle must have used his mind to tell him to behave or something because he huffed and turned back around.

I figured I might as well take the opportunity to tell him how I felt since Carlisle had him behaving for the time being…

I love her, Edward. And she loves me. I thought about the times we'd laughed together, her dreams, the way she smiled at me, the warm, complete feeling she gave me. She wants you to accept me. I've seen it in her dreams. It matters to her a lot more than you probably think. I thought about the first one, the ring I'd seen and Edward coming out to greet us.

I'm good for her. I can protect her. I make her happy. She tells me that, ya know…that I make her happy. Not that I need her to tell me. I can feel it myself, like she's a part of me. She says she's never felt like this for anyone, that she didn't think she was capable of loving someone like this.

Edward let out a deep breath but showed no other acknowledgement that he heard anything I was thinking. Maybe it was doing some good.

I thought about the way she looks at me so lovingly, the way it makes my heart stammer. I thought about how she skips over to me excitedly every day when I meet her outside her last class…the way she always squeezes me one last time before pulling away from a hug…all the times she curls into me and falls asleep…how she trusts me. There was no denying the intensity of our feelings for each other.

Edward wasn't responding, which I hoped was a good sign. I kept running over the time I'd spent with Ness until we pulled to the side of the road where we'd decided we'd go the rest of the way on foot. This bastard wasn't getting away. The seven of us went our separate directions and ran quietly but quickly through the woods to the house. We had every angle covered. The bastard would not get by us.

The nauseating stench of rotting corpse hit me before I saw it. Twenty feet to my left was a pale, naked body lying in an unnatural position, tossed into the woods like garbage. I couldn't stop to see if she was alive, although it was pretty evident that she wasn't. Our first job was to find the bastard and kill him before he had a chance to do any further damage.

Emmett, Carlisle, and I were coming around the back of the house as Warren was being pursued by Edward and Embry from the front. He was stopped dead in his tracks by the three of us. Emmett and I ripped his body to pieces while Alice started a fire just outside the sliding glass door. It was a surprisingly quick process. I was hoping to take some aggression out on the bastard, but he didn't even put up a fight.

"He knew he didn't have a chance," Edward said, answering my thoughts. "You need to come with me. There's a girl inside. I think she knows you."

"There's a survivor?" I asked as we ran into the house.

"Only one."

Inside the house looked like a scene straight out of a horror movie. Blood was everywhere…on the walls, the floor, and what little furniture that remained standing. The smell of death heavy in the air.

I entered the living room and that's when I saw her: Kimber's eyes and lips were swollen shut. She was lying on a stripped, blood stained mattress. Bruises, blood, and cuts covered her entire body; some fresh, some beginning to heal, some infected. One of her legs was twisted and obviously broken. It was a miracle she had survived. A torn sheet was covering part of her naked, ravaged body. She was shaking but it couldn't have been because she was cold. The house was hot as hell.

She wasn't exactly on my list of favorite people these days, but I did still care about her on some level. We had been friends for a long time. It sickened me to see her like this. I felt tears building behind my eyes and let them come. No one deserved to be tortured like this.

Nausea overwhelmed me and I barely made it to the back door before my breakfast spilled out. I fell to my knees in anguish.

I felt responsible for this. If Embry and I had done more, these girls wouldn't be dead…Kimber wouldn't be practically dead. I thanked my lucky stars that I'd at least managed to keep Ness safe.

"Jacob, we need you to talk to her. She's conscious but scared and edging on shock. A familiar voice would help tremendously," Carlisle said.

I looked up at him from the ground. "What do I say to her? The last time we spoke wasn't exactly pleasant."

"Edward says she wishes you were here, that she was praying you'd come help her before we got to the house. She needs you."

I stood and tried to take a cleansing breath to help pull myself together, but it only filled my senses with that nightmarish smell. I walked back to where she lay and sat beside the mattress in the floor.

"Can I touch her hand?"

"I wouldn't right now. She's been…through a lot. It might make things worse."

"Did he…force her?" I asked shakily.

Carlisle shook his head. "He was about to, but apparently he used the other girls to satisfy his urges."

"He knew he'd hurt her. He was holding off…until she was changed. But he had to find someone else to change her. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop," Edward informed us.

I sort of figured he had, judging by her appearance, but hearing that he hadn't made me feel slightly better. I wished I could take the pain for her, for all the girls. I couldn't break down right now. I had to be here for her.

"Kim…Kim, it's Jake. I'm going to keep you safe, okay?" I looked to Edward, who was standing in the corner across from me. Tell me what she's thinking. What she wants to say.

He nodded. "Please don't leave," he said for her in a whisper so low she couldn't have heard him. The look on his face was one of misery. I'm sure seeing the things inside her mind was pretty hard.

"I'm not going anywhere, I promise. You're going to be fine. I'll stay with you as long as you need me."

"I'm not dead?" Edward continued speaking for her.

"You're alive. You're not going to die. There's a doctor here who's going to help you. I know him, he's a good man." It was so hard to look at her damaged face. I wanted to be strong for her. She couldn't see the tears running down my face, but I had to make an effort to keep my voice from showing my pain.

Her hand shook as it lifted from the bed. Instinctively, I took it into my own. She dropped hers back down and held onto mine weakly.

"I'm really sorry for the thing last week. I don't deserve to have you here," Edward said on Kimber's behalf.

"Don't worry about that. I hurt you. I'm sorry."

Carlisle came back with Embry, both of them carrying armloads of medical supplies.

"Ask her if it's okay to give her morphine for the pain. Explain what's going on around her," Edward whispered.

"Embry's here, too. Everything is going to be fine. There are a lot of good people here to help you. The doctor, his name's Carlisle, can he give you some morphine for the pain?" I asked, fighting the shaking sound that wanted to escape my throat.

"Yes, please make it stop. Where is…" Edward choked on his words. He slid down the wall onto the floor. "I can't. Her memories…Jasper, I need you in here. Hold your breath."

Jasper came in looking as sick as the rest of us.

"Please help her…us," Edward asked. It sounded like he was crying.

"What was she saying, Edward?" I asked.

"She was asking where Warren was and thinking about how he wanted to…kill Renesmee. He…he called the other girls by her name when he—" He jumped off the ground and pulled Carlisle away from Kimber. It looked like he had been feeling around for a good vein to put the IV in. "The cold, Carlisle. It's scaring her. Let Jacob do it. The morphine will knock her out enough that the cold won't matter after that."

He handed me the little needle. I took it and must have looked pretty confused. "Like this," Carlisle said, prodding around on my forearm. "Here, feel this?" I pressed around and sort of figured out that there was a vein right there. "Then you slide it in like this." He stuck me with the one in my hand and demonstrated the angle and where to stop.

I still had no idea what I was doing, but I'd try. Edward handed me a fresh needle and I started feeling around Kimber's arm. I stuck her, hoping I did it right, and Carlisle finished up without touching her. Less than a minute later, her shaking stopped.

"Can you hear me?" I asked her.

"Yeah. I can't feel the pain anymore," Edward said, once again speaking for Kimber. "Jacob, we're going to have to take her home with us. You and Renesmee can come if either of you wishes, but Kimber needs more than what Carlisle can do here. He's going to get her cleaned up and fix her up as best he can, but we're leaving soon. Can you explain that to her?"

I reiterated what Edward said, leaving out the part about Ness coming.

"She understands but she's pretty out of it right now. Are you willing to be there for her until she's well enough to get by without you? You're all she has. We can't go to her parents and explain what she's been through," Edward said lowly.

What kind of man would I be if I said no? "Of course I will."

I held Kimber's hand while Carlisle worked on her. She wasn't awake but she still wouldn't let go. I told her I'd be there for her, and I would. Ness was a kindhearted person, she would understand. This wasn't about me loving Kimber or anything like that. This was me being a friend.

Doc stitched her newer wounds and cleaned and bandaged the ones that were beginning to heal. He splinted her mangled leg. Setting it would have to wait because, apparently, it had apparently been broken a few days ago and would require surgery. He explained everything to me, from the different types of medicines he put into her IV to the liquids he poured onto her wounds.

Esme and Rosalie finally arrived carrying more supplies and a gurney.

"Where's Ness?" I asked.

"Not staying in the car," she said defiantly as she walked through the door with a pissed off Bella.

This place was enough to give me nightmares; I couldn't blame them for wanting to keep her out. Ness slid down beside me on the floor and started crying as she looked at Kimber. I pulled her against my side.

"She's going to be alright," I said, kissing the top of her head. "I have to go to your family's house. Are you coming?"

She nodded and pecked my cheek. "I'm going to wait in the car."

I watched her walk out somberly and, looking around, noticed that the house was back to normal. There was no blood on the walls or floor. The place was completely empty and spotless with the exception of the broken girl lying on the mattress and the medical supplies that were spread all around her. The smell of death still lingered, but it wasn't quite as thick and was masked by the smell of bleach and ammonia.

The gurney barely fit into the back of the monstrous SUV that the Cullens had driven down. Kimber was completely out of it. Ness and I sat in the back seat so we could be close to her. Ness was pretty concerned. She and Kimber never got a chance to become good friends, but Ness was a compassionate, caring person. It could have been a stranger and she would have acted the same way.

During the ride back I learned that Emmett, Alice, and Embry had taken the bodies several miles down the road and left them behind a gas station. Someone would be horrified when they found them, but at least the families would be able to say goodbye and bury their children.

Surprisingly, none of the girls were bitten. That would have been a quick and fairly painless death. I'm sure whatever they endured was much worse.

Although it did make it so that their bodies could be returned instead of burned mercilessly with the pile of Warren's remains, the contents of the house, and the blood spattered leaves and branches they'd found in the woods from one girl's attempt to escape.

The bastard was dead, but I really wished I could reassemble him and kill him over and over again. Death wasn't the right form of punishment. Vamps killed every day, and I hated it. But what he did was a thousand times worse than killing an innocent human. He violently raped and tortured them. I tried not to listen as the others described the things they saw. After everything I heard, I was thanking God that all I had to do was hold Kimber's hand while everyone else cleaned up the gruesome scene.

And that my Ness was safe…with me…always.

A/N: The title of this chapter, The Nameless, is a Slipknot song that fits perfectly with this chapter. Read the lyrics for a peek inside the mind of an obsessed psychopath.

Chapter three of Maniacal: Second Chances corresponds with this one, so go check it out.

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