The Deadfall

by Lilly Black

  With his gift for June in hand, he crept down the stairs, not wanting to draw her attention just yet, and she remained unaware of him until he was standing behind her chair. Then he cleared his throat, and she jumped.

  "This," he whispered seductively with his Indian accent as he slid the tome over her shoulder, "is my holy book."

  Without another word, Ravi strode off into the kitchen without looking back, leaving June staring at the well-worn hardcover before her, her eyes wide, her mouth gaping. She didn't know what the words Kama Sutra meant, but the weird, stylized drawing of a man and woman entwined on the front gave her the general idea.

  She looked around casually to make sure no one had seen him give it to her, then she hid the cover behind her journal and hurried out the door, biting her lip as her smile threatened to show itself for the first time since Alek left her the night before.

  Day 50

  Dani

  In the cabin next door to June's, Dani had gone straight to bed, not even wanting to talk to Jax, but before she did, she drank a large glass of water that would be guaranteed to wake her up before the sun because she didn't want to set an alarm and risk waking him as well.

  Around 4:00 AM, the water did its trick. As Jax lay sleeping, his beautiful, naked body sprawled over the bed, the tattoos on his arms lit by the moonlight, Dani gave him a long, wistful stare before she pulled on her winter coat and boots, armed herself, and headed out toward the back gate to see the one person who could help her. Even though the last time she had come out in the woods alone had been terrifying, she was determined to get inside Jax's head and put an end to this torment one way or another, and when she finally passed the wellspring and saw the flickering flame up ahead, a feeling of peace came over her. She hurried toward the light shining through the cottage window as the cold wind blew through her hair, and she soon arrived to find the witch standing on the porch waiting for her.

  "Let's get you warm, child," she said, putting her shawl around Dani's shoulders like a loving grandmother, and once she was sitting inside in front of the fireplace with a cup of tea in hand, Dani found herself suddenly telling the woman everything that was on her mind. When she finished, the witch looked her in the eye with a hellish grin.

  "Why scale this mountain and risk your life amongst the dead just to borrow my power when you could have it for yourself?" she asked.

  "I don't understand," Dani said.

  "I can show you what's in your lover's heart, or I can make you the earth beneath his feet, the fire in his soul, the water that quenches him, and the very air that he breathes," she whispered.

  Maybe it was the way she romanticized it that sucked her in, but suddenly it all seemed so easy, instantly transitioning Dani from a desire to see inside Jax's mind to a zombie-like willingness to take whatever magic she was offering.

  "How does that sound?" the witch asked.

  "It's all I ever wanted," Dani admitted, not realizing how literal the old woman meant her words.

  "Close your eyes," she said, and as Dani complied, the witch sat in the chair facing hers, grasping her hands and muttering under her breath. Dani couldn't understand what she was saying, unsure if her words were just spoken too softly or if they were in some foreign tongue as a strange light began to emanate from the old woman's eyes. It started out as two faint, ice blue dots, but when it burgeoned into a single ball of energy, she could see a thin magenta membrane around it that grew until it engulfed them both. Mesmerized by the colors of the light and the hum of the spell, Dani felt herself lulled into a trancelike state, her limbs heavy with the same hazy feeling she remembered from Madam Levinia's, and she found it comforting since she credited the gypsy with bringing her together with Jax.

  Jax. He was always the first thought she had upon waking in the morning, and now he was the last thought she remembered having at all...

  Day 50

  Olivia

  Olivia woke entwined with Alek. It wasn't the first morning she had opened her eyes to find herself in his arms, but it was the first time they had been naked. In the hazy moments between sleep and full consciousness, she reveled in the sensation of his warm, hard body against hers, and even when he began to stir, she didn't feel the slightest twinge of the guilt that had kept her from consummating their union for so long. It just felt right.

  "Good morning," he whispered, and as she looked up into his eyes, they both started giggling, immersed in an absolute bliss that quickly turned into desire as she felt him grow hard against her leg at the slightest movement.

  "Again?" she asked excitedly, just as ravenous as she had been the first time even though they had woken and made love twice in the night already, making up for so much lost time.

  "Again," he growled as he rolled her onto her back. She wrapped her legs around his hips as he slid inside her, and soon, just as he promised her a month ago, she was screaming his praises so loud, he had to smother her cries with a kiss to keep her from drawing the attention of everyone in the compound.

  "You don't need to worry about the noise, by the way," she assured him afterward as they lay side by side. "The walls are thick, and even if they weren't, I don't care who hears."

  "Then I don't care either," he said because his only concern was her feeling uncomfortable, but she wasn't. She had finally committed to her new life with him, and as soon as he left for his shift at the main gate this morning, she was going to run straight to Dani and Liana to gush about how perfect last night had been. But first, she wanted to write it all down in the brand new journal she was starting this morning.

  After Alek got out of bed to take a shower, she retrieved it from the bookshelf in her office and started reliving every last, delicious detail, but there was so much to write, she hadn't even come close to finishing when he was ready to leave for work. He came over to the bed and sat down, reading over her shoulder.

  "That good, huh?" he asked, and she snapped the book closed.

  "You were there, you tell me," she said with a wicked grin.

  "It was the best night of my life," he whispered, then he kissed her as he stood to leave for work. "And I want to do it all over again tonight."

  "Oh, we're going to do more than that," she purred, licking her lips as she stared at his bulge, which was already growing at the thought of it.

  "I can't wait," he growled, smiling down at her, then he glanced over toward her lingerie drawer. "Wear the black one tonight." He winked at her then forced himself to turn away lest she tempt him back into bed. It had occurred to him to ask her why she was wearing lingerie when he came home last night, but he decided that it didn't matter. He was too happy now to care.

  Leaving Olivia completely enamored, Alek headed off to the wall where he had first watch with Jax in the guard station, and he had so much he wanted to talk about. It wasn't that he was the kind of guy to brag about his sex life. It's just that he had never experienced anything like Olivia, and she was the only thing on his mind.

  "Are you sure she wasn't faking that?" Jax asked when he told him how many times he made her come. He was skeptical because he had seen plenty of women fake it, but so had Alek. For the last decade of his life, most of the women he met were actresses.

  "I'm sure that's what it sounds like, but trust me, it was real. I could feel it. She would just gush inside...and tremble...she broke out in gooseflesh all over... It was fucking amazing to know I was doing that to someone," Alek said, and Jax was fascinated. Every night of his life since he was eighteen women tried to convince Jax Bonham that he was a sex god when in fact, he had been a fairly selfish lover. He just didn't know it until he met Dani and realized what it meant to make love to a woman. He wasn't thinking about himself anymore. All he cared about was pleasing her, and he was good at it...or at least he thought he was until Alek showed up talking about getting Olivia off a hundred times the very first night they slept together.

  "How?" he asked. "How did you do it?"

  "I don't know. I think she's just wi
red for it. I didn't do anything special," he said, but even as he said it, he realized it wasn't entirely true. He'd never been so invested in experiencing anyone like he was with Olivia. Orgasm hadn't been his goal. He went into it last night wanting to touch her, taste her, please her in every way, and his own pleasure was heightened as much by the fact that he was deeply in love with this woman as it was by how incredible it had been to make love to her. She was perfect - from the way she clung to him, forcing him deeper inside, to the words she whispered in his ear, commanding him to come - and being able to get her off like that was as satisfying as his own orgasm, maybe more. He just didn't know how he did it.

  "Well, if you figure it out," Jax said, "tell me. I want that for Dani."

  "Does she not come when you're fucking her?" Alek asked.

  "She does, but it's all about the clit with her. It's not the same thing."

  No, it is not, Alek thought with a wistful smile as memories of last night threatened to make him hard right there in the guard house with Jax. He turned away, staring out the window at the cold, cloudy winter day, trying to think of something helpful to say to his friend when he noticed a figure in the distance coming up the winding road from the second gate.

  "Hey, check this out," he said to Jax, and they both picked up their binoculars to get a better look at the lone man in a heavy winter coat walking toward them. The morning sun reflected off his mirrored glasses as it peeked out from behind a cloud, making it impossible to see his face, but he had a rifle slung across his back, and when he was on the final stretch to the gates of the Deadfall, Jax and Alek picked up their own rifles and headed out of the security station.

  Jax had assumed that Dani left for a shift earlier than his when he woke to find her gone, but instead, she was near the mountaintop, lost, disoriented and, abruptly ripped away from vivid dreams - terrifying dreams that still haunted her conscious mind even though she couldn't remember what they were about. The sun had risen, and she was aware of the brightness even before she looked around and noticed the heavy shadows cast on the ground as it shone through the trees where she had slept.

  Trees? she thought with a sudden jolt of adrenaline. Oh, my God!

  Dani was still in the woods, and now she wasn't sure she had been sleeping at all. She was upright, and she could hear dead leaves crunching on the forest floor while she roamed around the mountain. As the sound grew, it was all she could focus on until she realized she wasn't the one making it. There were corpses coming at her from all directions - worn, rotting corpses that ambled along slowly, groaning and reaching for her as they came closer. Their foul reek filled her nostrils as she knelt and scrambled for her gun, but she couldn't get a grip on it. She could see it lying on the ground in front of her, yet it seemed to slip through her fingers every time she reached for it.

  Panicked, she sucked in a deep breath to scream for help, but the sound that came out wasn't her voice. It was a low rumbling noise that reminded her of the groans of the dead or the howling of the wind. No one would hear her cries as the horde of corpses closed in around her, reaching out with boney fingers to grab her, but their hands passed through her as if she had no form.

  Mystified, they sniffed at the air, trying to hone in on her as they began wandering in circles like dogs chasing their tails. They knew she was there somewhere. They could smell her, but they couldn't find her. Worse, Dani couldn't even find herself. She thought she caught a glimpse of her hair blowing in the wind out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned, she saw nothing. On the ground, her clothes and weapons lay scattered, and though she could see her pants, her shirt, and even her shoes clearly, she couldn't see her own feet. She could feel them, but they weren't there. Confused and unnerved, she slowly raised her hands in front of her face to look at them only to discover that she had no hands nor eyes with which to see them. Yet she could see. She could see, smell, feel, hear, and taste everything around her.

  What am I? she wondered, and as she heard the old witch's joyful cackling in the distance, she realized she had been transformed into something beyond human. But she wasn't sure if she had been blessed or cursed.

  Olivia finished her journal entry. She didn't have to be anywhere for a couple of hours when she was scheduled to train one of the new people from the solar farm at the security station. After she had chronicled all four events with Alek since the first time they made love last night, she took a shower, got dressed, and picked up her phone to track down her best friends, but before she could dial, it rang. It was Liana.

  "Hello?"

  "Hey," Liana said, and before she even had to chance to tell Olivia what she wanted, Olivia started talking. She was too excited to share her news about Alek.

  "So, should I come to your place or are you coming to mine? I need to tell somebody all the wonderfully nasty, little details about last night," she gushed, and though Liana would have loved that because she had some wonderfully nasty, little details of her own to share, now was definitely not the time.

  "Olivia..." she began then stopped. Right before Olivia called, Liana had spoken with Aiden, who was at the main guard station with Alek. Aiden had news that he elected Liana to deliver to her friend, but after the way Olivia had opened the conversation, Liana had no idea how she was going to tell her. Unable to bring herself to say it, though she felt like a coward and a terrible friend for what she was about to do, she took the easy way out. "They really need you at the front gate right now. I'll catch up with you later, okay?"

  "Is everything alright?" Olivia asked, suddenly worried.

  "I think you'd better just go see for yourself," Liana said, then she hung up quickly before her friend could ask any more questions.

  "Okay..." Olivia said warily as she slipped the phone into her pocket. She grabbed her coat and headed out through the lodge. It was bitter cold when she stepped onto the front porch, and she wrapped her scarf around her head as the first flurries of winter began to swirl in the air above the Deadfall. They melted on her cheeks as she made the short walk to the front of the community, and when the gate came into view, she could see a man standing just inside, bundled in a heavy winter coat with a fur-lined hood that blocked much of his face. The rest was obscured by sunglasses and a thick, unkempt beard, but this was a man she knew instantly in spite of all of that.

  "Oh, my God!" she cried as she froze in her tracks. Her heart was beating out of her chest, and her mind was assaulted with a barrage of feelings from extreme joy to devastating angst as her beautiful memories of last night suddenly felt like a crushing weight upon her soul.

  "Olivia!" the man called out, his voice cracking with raw emotion as he hurried toward her, his arms wide to embrace her, and in the guard house window over his shoulder, she caught a glimpse of Alek, his eyes filled with desolation as he felt a knife twist in his heart because everything was about to change.

  With tears streaming down her face, Olivia looked away, unable to maintain eye contact as she spoke the name of the man who had fought the dead for two months just to see her face again.

  "Reid," she breathed softly, and he nearly collapsed as, at long last, he folded his arms around his beloved wife.

  Excerpt from

  Book II of

  Lilly Black's Gods of Earth Series

  Day 50

  Alek stood frozen, his head hung, his eyes on the floor. He couldn't look at her because if he did, he wouldn't be able to say the words he knew he had to say. He had made her a promise he never thought he would have to keep, and now it was time to pay the piper.

  "I'm happy for you," he lied. "I'll move my things into one of the trailers up the hill after my shift."

  "Alek, you don't have to do that," Olivia said.

  "I said I would step aside if your husband came home. I don't want to cause you any problems, Liv. We'll just pretend it never happened."

  "Pretend what never happened?" she demanded. "That you never helped me get through the toughest time in my life? That you never came
in here and protected me and my daughter when we needed it the most? That you never had the patience of a saint with me even though you deserved far better than what I gave you? Alek, there's no way I can pretend those things never happened."

  She walked over to him and lifting his chin, wanting him to look her in the eye as she got to the point.

  "I don't want to lose you, Alek. I don't know what's going to happen, but I can't let you go because..." She paused, searching her brain for words she hadn't said out loud since she was teasing the cute Swedish exchange student in high school, and when they came to her, she had to gather the courage to say them. She looked up into his eyes, her own full of tears, and said...

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