Read Should Have Killed The Kid for Free Online Page B

holding up the bar in some bumfuck bar when the old geezer with the crazy eyes had stepped in. He’d have been wrapped up all nice and snug in the bed with Naomi.
    Minus the pints and he wouldn’t have had to choose.

* * *
    ...'Trouble?!' John parroted George's words. 'Trouble?! What the fuck is this?!'
    The abrupt change in John's demeanour caught everyone off guard.
    Jess gasped as he blinked and abruptly John was standing while the chair clattered across the floor. The sheer speed at which he'd moved took Jess's breath away.
    'Whoa!' George held up his hands placatingly while Jess stared in disbelief at John, narrowing his eyes.
    Is that something moving beneath his skin? Is it–
    He didn't get time to finish his thought.
    'WHOAH!!' George repeated a lot louder and a lot more panicky as splatters of blood and flesh sprayed across the office and spikes abruptly exploded from all over John's skin, reducing his skin into fleshy curtains of tattered flesh as they emerged. Jess couldn't stop staring at the bony protuberances that bristled all over the client's body. Particularly the glinting barbs they all seemed to end in.
    He's one of the bonded! The realisation hit Jess like a fist and suddenly the deference his uncle had shown made perfect sense.
    John leant forward over the desk and the other two nearly tripped over themselves getting out of their chairs.
    'Easy, John, Easy. Fuck, he didn't mean nothing.' Dean's voice was so far removed from his usual gravel that for a second, Jess was certain his uncle was taking the piss. 'Come on, he was just making conversation.'
    John hissed something in reply that Jess couldn't quite make out. Obviously it was a step in the right direction though, judging by George's reaction. His uncle's partner carefully maneuvered himself from behind the large coffee ringed desk, cooing away, 'Easy, easy, easy,' while his shiny shirt gleamed beneath the fluorescents above.
    John stared at him for a long second. Jess felt certain he was about to attack the man as George lent over and picked the chair off the ground before setting it back in place. He had to choose his steps well to avoid squelching through some of the larger sprays John's transformation had unleashed.
    'I was just making conversation.' George reinforced the message as he made a show of dusting off the fallen chair. After another long second, John abruptly sucked all the spikes back in.
    It happened so quickly that a blink of an eye was enough for Jess to miss the majority of it. He got a brief glimpse of flesh knitting back together; the splattered fragments that dotted the office rising and flying across to be reabsorbed by John as though caught in some extreme gravitational pull.
    Then blink! and John was back to his usual unassuming, chubby, crazy-haired appearance.
    He still looked a little surly while he stared around the office but George and his uncle shared a relieved glance as the older man returned to his chair. From his perch in the corner, Jess did his utmost to draw as little attention as possible toward himself.
    'I'm sorry if he offended you,' Dean chirped up, breaking the silence that had just started to drift into awkward territory. 'I assure you that wasn't his intention. I mean, you know the motto we stand by here: Ask no questions. Always take payment in advance. As long as it's paid for whatever the client does with their leased property is their business....'
    Jess shook his head as his uncle launched into the spiel that he'd already heard one hundred times that week. The one he'd already come to think of as the slumlord's creed.
    Of course he'd never say that to his uncle's face. He was inordinately proud of the script that ended with:
    '...essentially put, we don't care.'
    After another second of staring John's face suddenly split into a bright smile as though nothing had happened in the preceding couple of minutes. He threw himself back into the chair with a casual, 'Sorry, it's been an edgy couple of