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Full of Grace
The ride to St. Mary's Sacred Heart church took hours. At least it felt like hours. In reality it was probably only a half hour. Reality, that was a funny word. This did not feel like reality at all, it felt like someone had crawled into my subconscious, took every fear and molded and twisted it into a living nightmare. I could only hope Nick and I would both make it through to the other side of this hell.
God, Nick. The image of him tied to that cross, bruised and bleeding, his side looking like it had been split open. The pain he must be in. Because of me. All because of me. He's too young to be dealing with this. I closed my eyes there in the back of the police van and prayed, "God, if only one of us can walk out of this, let it be Nick. He's young and he has so much to experience still. Please God, I've never asked for much, but please let this one request be the one you answer. Take me if it means that Nick lives, because if he dies, I go with him."
There was a rap on the back door of the van signifying that we were there. I looked up at Doug and he gave me some instructions and warnings and I nodded over and over, not really listening, too caught up in the image of Nick hanging there on the cross, I couldn't get it out of my mind.
The S.W.A.T team van was parked a block away and the entire team of officers clad in black body armor and helmets scattered in different directions like they were part of a choreographed deadly ballet.
I was switched into a car that Doug was driving, dressed in casual clothing but having enough fire power at this fingertips to destroy a small country if Stefanie tried something. We drove closer to the church and I could see the door cracked open, waiting for me. I looked down at my watch, I had a the stopwatch going since the moment we found the note, 3:53:26. We were cutting it close. Doug parked the car in front of the church and nodded as he looked in the rearview mirror at me. I took a deep breath and opened the door, stepping out into the hot Orlando air.
No sooner had I closed the car door, then Doug was driving away. I flicked my eyes around and could see nothing that looked out of the usual. Only the deserted streets. I knew that just out of eyesight were fire trucks, ambulances, police and the blood hungry vultures of the press. He felt eyes on him from the sky and knew the S.W.A.T. team was in place on the tops of the buildings around the church.
With another deep breath, I closed my eyes for a brief second in prayer and opened them again, walking for the door to the church.
The door opened easily. Maybe I had watched one too many bad late night movies, but I somehow expected a creak of the hinges announcing my arrival and spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling to greet me. Instead the door swung open easily and the entryway was rather neat, just a little dusty.
My nose crinkled at the smell running headlong into it. Gasoline.
I walked further into the church and laid eyes upon Nick. Oh sweet Jesus. The stench of gasoline was stronger and I could see the wood stacked at the base of the cross was soaked with it. I raised my eyes and looked at Nick. There wasn't a spot on him that wasn't covered with bruises or bloody. Rope was twined around his ankles tightly, binding him to the cross. I could see the marks over the rope on his ankles and shins from where the rope was biting into his flesh. I raised my eyes upwards, taking in the dark purple bruises and the dried blood that had caked on his skin. My eyes feel on his boxers, they were a mess of human waste. I wondered how long Nick had been tied up and helpless while she did this to him How long it was before his body shut down and the piss was literally beaten out of him.
My eyes kept travelling upwards over his stomach. I winced when I saw the gash that carved up his stomach almost to his hip. The edges were red and crusted with something. As I looked longer, I realized they were burns.
I bit my lip until it bled, the saltiness of my blood flooding my mouth. I had to look away from the angry red gash. My eyes moved upwards further, the welts and bruises marring the skin with colors that shouldn't be there, deep blues and purples, sickening yellows. I knew that pain intimately and knew that every breath he was taking had to be agony. My hand strayed to my own ribs, a dull ache still present in them.
His throat was mottled different hues of purple leading to his face. Oh his face. That sweet, innocent face was almost unrecognizable. Welts rose from the surface, raising his eye and cheek to grotesque proportions. His normally rosy lips, the same lips that had given me comfort and love when I needed them the most, were ashen and a crack snaked through the flesh, leading to a trail of dried blood that at one time had dripped the crimson liquid from his chin.
His nose was caked with the same dried blood, the trails leaving stains down his face. His eyes were closed, but I knew even if he had been awake, only one of them would be open, the other swollen shut with a mottled black and purple patchwork over it. Above that eye was another gash, near his hairline, staining the blond hair around it a grotesque red color. Trails of dried red snaked down his forehead and over the swollen flesh of his eye and merged with the dried trails from his nose and mouth. It was a wonder he hadn't drowned from the sheer amount of blood that had streamed down his face.
Even his ear looked bruised and bloodied. I could only see one side of his face from the way it was leaning forward against his chest, but I could only imagine how much worse the other side looked. I felt the tears flowing down my face, unable to look away from him, knowing I had caused this to happen to him.
"Punctual as usual, Kevin."
The sound of that voice made my skin crawl and my back involuntarily stiffen. It took all I had not to throw myself at her and rip her limbs from her body and beat her with them for all she had done to Nick. "What did he ever do to you, Stefanie?"
Stefanie looked up at her handy work and then looked at him, "He took you away from me. You belong to me, Kevin."
I fought back the urge to wring her neck, "Fuck off Bitch, I belong to no one, least of all you."
She looked a little taken aback by that. She looked up at the sloppily boarded windows of the church, cracks of color from the stained glass spilling onto the floor around them. "How many men have their guns on me right now?"
I jumped in surprise. She knew. Hell only knew what she had up her sleeve now. I would have said Heaven, but we all knew who she was riding with, and it's wasn't Him. I looked her dead in the eyes, "Enough that I know you will not walk out of here alive."
I heard a moan coming from the front of the church and saw Nick's head lift from his chest as he hissed in pain from the movement. I saw his one eye open and he caught sight of me, "K..Kevin?"
I winced, his voice sounded so weak, so broken. I could only nod while I struggled to find my voice, to make it have a measure of strength that wasn't there, to reassure him that I would get him out of there. "Yes, Nick. I'm getting you out of here."
Stefanie laughed, the harsh sound of it echoing in the stillness of the room. "Oh Kevin, I think you knew walking into here that no one was going to be leaving. Nick wasn't part of the original plan, but he's served my purpose well."
I knew I was going to be sorry for asking, but I had to know. "Stefanie, why me? Why do all this to me?"
She smiled, "Because you could give me what I want Kevin."
"And what is that?"
She smiled even more, looking almost gleeful, "Immortality. No one is ever going to mention Kevin Richardson and Nick Carter with out my name coming into the conversation. The legend of me will never die, it will live on in every mention of your name or Nick's. People will remember the two of you and when they do, they will have to remember me. Even in death you won't be able to escape me, our names will be forever linked in history."
I stared at her in shock, the sick and twisted bitch had planned this all along, knowing what I would do at every step of the way. The plan may have changed shape a few times, but in the end she knew that it would come down to this. Her and me, standing face to face in the final showdown and neither one of us was going to walk away. I shook my head at her in disgust, "I hope you rot in hell for everything you've done."
Her face hardened into a stone mask as a small smile upturned her lips, "After you." Without another word, her hand came up from her side, clutching a gun and two rapid blasts filled the air.
The impact knocked my feet out from underneath me as I crumpled backwards, sprawling out onto the dust laden floor. The sound of Nick screaming my name was the last thing I heard before darkness enveloped me in it's sweet release.
Nick struggled against the rope that held him to the cross, a scream of horror and pain carrying out to the police and emergency workers outside, shaking them to the core with the agony of it. The sound died on his lips only when it became too much for his beaten body and he slumped forward again, joining Kevin in the darkness.
The first shot entered the sanctuary of the abandoned church as Nick's cry of anguish was still hanging fresh in the air. It ripped through the newly hung silence like a dagger as the impact wrenched a cry of almost surprise from Stephanie as the hot steel cut through her body. Another came, and then another. The gun slipped from Stephanie's suddenly lifeless fingers, falling to the ground and bouncing off of the wooden floor and firing a single shot across the length of the church.
The hot steel traveled only far enough to come into contact with the brass plaque at the bottom of the cross where Nick was bound "He shall die so that others may live" read the inscription. The contact of the bullet on the brass plaque made a sharp noise of impact and a single spark traveled from the spot where the two metals collided. In the next instant the spark multiplied as it landed on the gasoline soaked timbers and soon the pile of wood was engulfed in flames, the tongues racing from one fuel soaked pile to another. The heat radiated outwards at incredible speed as thick black smoke belched into the air.
Nick shook himself awake, the heat was unbearable. "Mom, turn on the air conditioning." He tried to return to the comforting darkness, but the heat only intensified. He opened his eyes and saw the flames shooting around him, licking upwards at his feet. The reality that he wasn't at home and this wasn't a dream fell upon him like a freight train. Sweat poured off of him as he heat from the fire below him rose ever higher. He was tied so tightly that he couldn't move any part of his body. There was no escape from the flames. His mouth opened and screams poured forth from him, screams of a trapped animal that had nowhere to go. Screams of someone burning alive.
I heard a wailing noise as the darkness receded around me and the intense heat enveloped me. I groaned as my ribs ached and cracked with every breath. I slid my hand over my chest feeling the two holes that had been made into the bulletproof vest that was strapped to my torso. My senses cleared some more and I realized that wailing noise was Nick, only it was more of a tortured scream. My eyes snapped open and I screamed in horror at the sight in front of me. Flames were shooting up around Nick so high that I could barely make out the top of his body. The smoke was filling the church, crawling into my lungs with every breath I took. I remembered Doug's words about seeing someone burned to death, "Most people can't imagine what a burn victim goes through, what they look like." Only this wasn't some random stranger that I was reading about the next day in the paper, this was happening right in front of my eyes. I was watching my best friend as the flames licked at him and would consume him any minute.
With a howl, I scrambled to my feet, weaving from the dizziness of the smoke in my lungs and the blows the bullets had delivered to my chest through the vest. I needed to get to Nick, I would carry that cross out of the church on my back if I had to, but I needed to get Nick out of there.
I started to stagger forward when my feet hit something solid. I looked down and there at my feet was Stefanie, her blood pooling around my feet, a sick smile still on her face as he cloudy eyes stared up at me, unseeing. I nearly wretched and drew my foot back, kicking her squarely in the head as hard as I could.
Before I could take another step towards Nick, I felt arms gripping me and dragging me backwards, further away from Nick. I clawed at the hands holding me, screaming for me to be let go. Screaming Nick's name as I fought to get to him. The arms around me were too strong as I was carried, kicking and screaming out into the Orlando dusk.
The arms didn't let me go until I was carried out of the building and deposited on the sidewalk, a blanket wrapped around me as my hoarse voice kept screaming for Nick. I kept trying to get up, to get back in there to get my friend, but each time I was held down and told to stay put.
Nick's screams were still spilling out of the church, carried on the clouds of black smoke that streamed out of the windows and over the edges of the roof. Firemen aimed hoses at the blaze that was quickly overtaking the church as suddenly the screams from inside stopped. I felt my heart stop with them. I ripped the oxygen mask someone had clamped over my mouth away and staggered to my feet, a keening cry like nothing that had ever come out of my body ripping from my lips. Every cell of my body came forth in the effort of this cry, my muscles knotting so tightly it felt as if they would rise up and rip right off my bones. This wasn't happening, he couldn't be gone. God couldn't be that horribly cruel to let me, the cause of all of it, be the only one to walk away.
The flames were now spitting out of the windows at the end of the church Nick was on. I knew it was hopeless. I knew that I had nothing now, that Nick was gone and nothing would ever be right again. I fell to my knees on the asphalt as the cry died on my lips, my body starved for air as sobs overtook me.
The church was engulfed with flames as smoke streamed out of the doorway I had been ripped out of only moments earlier. I half expected to see Stefanie rise from the dead and walk out of the church like only pure evil can do.
The smoke swirled around a form and my breath caught in my throat as I thought for one horrifying second that my thought had come to reality and that Stefanie had indeed resurrected her evil. Nothing prepared me for what I saw coming out of the doorway. A firefighter was contending with something that was fighting him every step of the way, weakly, but fighting none the less. My name crying from his lips, begging someone to go back and get me, to not let me burn in there.
My heart nearly leapt out of my chest as I recognized the gangly, soot covered arms and legs that were clawing to get back in the church, crying my name in a hoarse voice, barely heard over the hiss of the fire hoses and static of the walkie talkies.
Emergency Medical people started rushing for them, but no one moved faster than me. I don't even remember running to him, I just remember suddenly being there as I screamed his name. He turned around in the firefighters arms to see me barreling at him, covered in soot myself.
I ripped him out of the firefighter's arms as we clung to each other like if we let go we would be lost from each other forever. My knees wobbled beneath me as I fell to the ground, cradling my precious friend in my arms. We hugged each other until we were both crying out in pain, but we didn't care. Someone draped a blanket around us, but no one dared try to separate us.
I looked down at Nick, beaten, bloody, covered in soot and he honestly never looked more beautiful to me in my life. He was alive and that was the most beautiful thing of all. I leaned down and carefully picked a corner of his mouth that wasn't too badly injured and kissed him softly.
He looked up at me and tried as much of a smile as he could do with every part of his face aching, "I told you that you were strong."
I smiled back with tears streaming down my soot covered cheeks, "I'm only strong when I have you behind me, Nick. You are the strong one."
As the fire raged in the church and the firefighters battled to contain the blaze, I gathered Nick more closely in my arms and gently carried him to the waiting medical personnel, not seeing anything but the miracle that had befallen both of us. We had come face to face with evil in the form of Stefanie and we had managed to survive. The flashes of cameras went off as the press took every available picture, the lights of the TV cameras trained on the two of us as I moved us to the ambulance, even the firefighers running more hoses to the blaze went unnoticed.
I laid him gently down on the gurney and straightened to stand back up when I felt a hand slip into mine and hold mine tightly. I knew it was Nick's. I squeezed back and looked down at him. One thing was for sure, I was never letting him go again if I had anything to say about it.
The End.
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