by Lilly Black
In one of the electric cars, Alek and Reid rode in the front since they were too tall to sit comfortably in the back while Olivia and Ravi sat behind them, and the trip was quiet and the tension thick, like riding with not one but two angry fathers who didn't have patience for anything.
With the full moon above, they turned off the headlights when they were within a few miles of the spot where they planned to park the car and pressed on stealthily, not seeing a single scout along the winding, illogical path they chose that ultimately led to a one lane road that dropped them off directly in the woods they then traversed to get near their destination. On the other side of the forest, they had to cross the main road to the compound and hide in a thicket of trees just outside the chain link fence the Sinner and his men installed. Once there, they found only a single patrol that went by the woods at twenty minute intervals, allowing them to time the release of their drones to take aerial video without being noticed.
Olivia and Alek watched for the guards with bows and arrows at the ready while Reid and Ravi sent the black drones over the fence high above the compound in the night sky. New moon might have been better for concealing drones, but feeling that the ability to drive without headlights was more important, they decided to take this risk. Besides, one thing they knew about the Sinner from Widow's experience was that he was rarely up to do his midnight toking. In fact, by all accounts, the Sinner's people kept the hours of farmers, maximizing the daylight, and based on the video feed they were seeing from the drones, this was indeed the case. There were guards stationed at several points within the fence that had been erected around the campus of a former private school, but most of them were paying little attention to their surroundings with the exception of those patrolling the outside, whom the team from the Deadfall had been successfully avoiding by using the drones to track their positions when they weren't hidden by the trees surrounding the property.
Watching on dim video screens, they had nearly mapped the entire campus when Reid heard the rustling of leaves in the distance behind them. A random corpse was ambling out of the woods on the other side of the road. He whistled to Alek and Olivia, but neither could get a clear shot from where they stood. They couldn't move either. The guards were right around the corner, and they would surely hear the sounds of their footfalls.
"Time," Ravi whispered as he brought in his drone, letting Reid know that the guards were coming, but having been distracted by the zombie that was now within ten yards of him, Reid did not have time to recall his. He lowered it above the roof of one of the buildings, handed the control to Ravi, and waited with his knife to take out the corpse, and as the guards rounded the corner, they heard the sounds coming from the woods as Reid struggled with a large, recently deceased man. They shined their flashlights into the trees just after Reid managed to get his knife in the zombie's head. He leaned back against a large tree trunk, pulling the dead weight with him, and from their own hiding spots, Alek and Olivia kept their arrows trained on the guards. In need of a distraction, Ravi flew Reid's drone into a metal parking sign inside the fence, drawing the guards' attention away immediately.
Reid exhaled, dropping the corpse, and once Ravi recalled the drone, they decided to call it a night. They had learned most of what they needed to know anyway, so they began to pack up, motioning for Olivia and Alek to abandon their post. They stepped out of their hiding place in a copse of trees, and Olivia was immediately knocked down by two people running through the grass along the tree line, both looking over their shoulders instead of watching where they were going.
"My queen!" a surprised, young man whispered as he offered her his hand to help her to her feet. It was Austin, who as luck would have it had chosen tonight to make his escape with his sister Sheri.
"Austin? What are you doing?" she asked as Reid and Alek ushered them all across the street and into the forest.
"I had to get Sheri out of there. My uncle Steve was..." he trailed off, unwilling to say it out loud.
"And what was your plan? Did you know we were here?"
"No, ma'am. I didn't have a plan other than to run. We weren't coming back to the Deadfall, though. I didn't want to put you in that position. Uncle Steve is going to be really angry when he finds us gone."
"Of course, you're coming back to the Deadfall. It's your home, and we'll protect you," Olivia insisted.
"Liv, we can do a better job of that if we hurry up and get the fuck out of here before we get caught," Reid said.
"Agreed," Alek said. "Give me the keys. I'm driving back." Now that Austin and Sheri were with them, someone was going to have to ride in the passenger's lap, and since that someone would likely be Olivia, there was no way he was going to sit there with the women they both loved in his lap and trust Reid to get them home safely without headlights.
"That's not necessary," Reid said.
"I didn't ask you if it was necessary. I said I'm driving back. What's the problem?"
"My problem is that I know these roads better than you."
"You had to look at the map the same as the rest of us to find a way to this compound, and as for the roads closer to home, I'd say I know them pretty well considering I've been going on scavenging missions since the beginning. In fact, I scavenged the fucking car we're driving."
"Yeah, while I was on the road, fighting the dead," Reid spat, and Olivia sighed, her eyes rolling in frustration, but she decided to let it play out as long as they didn't start shouting. Maybe it's what they needed, and better that it should happen here than back at the Deadfall where everyone could see it. She held her tongue as her husband continued. "I was in the capital city dealing with more zombies than you've seen all put together while you were in this little, sparsely populated bubble. I was sleeping in fields and under interstate bridges while you were in my wife's warm bed!"
"Yeah, sleeping! That's all I was doing while I was taking care of your wife, your compound, and your daughter!" Alek hissed.
"Savannah has a father. She doesn’t need you!"
"I’m not trying to be her father, but when she needs protection, I am going to be there for her."
"You can be there for her when I die."
"You’re not going to die, remember?" Olivia butted in, ready to take charge of an argument that was going off the rails. "All of our men are immortal."
"What do you mean?" Ravi asked, and Olivia whispered a condensed version of the story of Madam Levinia to him.
"So, the men who love you are immortal, eh?" he asked. "Because she doesn't know yet, but I think I might be in love with June."
"Unfortunately, it's not the men who love us; it's the men we love," Olivia explained.
"Oh," Ravi said, assuming Olivia was giving him confirmation that June did not feel the same way when all she was really doing was clarifying, but he wasn't the only one to take it the wrong way. Reid was angry and jealous.
"I guess for me it remains to be seen," he sniped at his wife.
"Would you stop, Reid? You know I love you," she said, then she turned to Alek. "I love you, too, but if the two of you can’t be adults about this, maybe it’s time you found a second wife so you don't have so many free nights to sit around and think of ways to be jackasses to each other!"
"You’d be okay with that?" Reid asked, incredulous.
"I already told Alek you should start thinking about it," she said.
"And I’m sure Mr. Perfect said, 'Oh, heavens, no, darling. I could never love another woman, but if that selfish, ill-mannered husband of yours insists, I'd share her bed when I'm not with you so as not to hurt the poor girl's tender feelings,'" Reid said in a very feminine voice, and Olivia and Alek couldn't help but find it funny because in a substantially less obnoxious and dramatic way, he did say something rather similar.
"God, you're a dick," Alek said as he laughed.
"Yeah, so are you, buddy," Reid responded, but as he thought about how ridiculous his impersonation of Alek had sounded, he laughed at himself and tossed
him the keys.
Day 143
Jax
Back at the Deadfall, Jax sat alone at home in his cabin in a great deal of pain. He didn't understand what was going on. Alek took an arrow to the head. Aiden took a bullet to the heart. They sprung back up within minutes, yet he was virtually crippled with back pain, which of course made him question the strength of Dani's love for him since the immortality spell was based on it.
Hoping it would help, he smoked a joint because they still had plenty of marijuana from the stash Olivia had hidden in the underground bunker, but the pot only served to intensify his paranoia about Dani. Even though he hated to be the one to tap into their limited supply of narcotics, he knew if he was going to sleep tonight, he needed some Vicodin at the very least. Dr. Hannah Gorely had promised to stop by and check on him, but he had been waiting since before Dani left to spend the night watching over Liana in the secret basement of the lodge. Finally, around 11:00 PM, there was a knock at the door.
"Come in," he called out, hoping it was the doctor because there was no other visitor he wanted to deal with in his current condition. It was, and after she locked the front door behind her, she came down the hallway into the bedroom he shared with his wife.
"How are we feeling tonight, Mr. Bonham?" she asked, and Jax wondered if it was just the pot when he thought he detected a sultry purr to her voice.
"Terrible," he said. "My lower back is wrecked, and it's shooting down my leg."
"It's the sciatic nerve," she said, then she handed him a small, blue pill and a bottle of water. "Take this, and I'll be back to check on you in about half an hour."
Jax swallowed the pill and set the water down on the nightstand as the doctor left. He wondered why she didn't just examine him while she was already there, but the pain was so bad, he was glad she would be returning because if this pill didn't work, he could ask her for something more. The pill wasn't going to work, though Jax had no way of knowing it.
About half an hour later, the doctor returned, asking if he was any better as she pulled the blankets away and started to examine him. He was wearing nothing but his jeans, though he would have been stripped to his boxer briefs if he hadn't been expecting the doctor.
"It still hurts bad," he said.
"I'll give you something stronger in a minute," she assured him, then she urged him to roll over. Though painful, her hands were warm and soft as they began to massage just the right spot on his back. Then she asked him to unbutton his pants. He hesitated.
"I'm a doctor, Mr. Bonham," she reminded him to put him at ease, and feeling silly, he did as she requested, allowing her to pull them down to his hips. He felt her hands on both sides, and in spite of his condition, his cock began to wake as her touch seemed more sexual than clinical.
It had to be the pot fucking with his head.
"I don't think you've done any permanent damage," she said as she tapped his cheek, signaling him to roll back over, and when he was facing her again, he saw her preparing a syringe. "You're going to be in pain for a while, but I'm going to give you a shot, then I'll prescribe some pills for tomorrow. You should be back to yourself in a few days." Then she reached for his arm.
"What's in there?" he asked as she wrapped a rubber tourniquet around his bicep.
"It's morphine," she said. Dr. Gorely had only been given a dozen vials, and there was a reason she was wasting one of them on Jax for back pain. Once she had the needle in his arm and had begun plunging the drug into his system, her long, white coat fell open to expose what she was wearing beneath.
"What the..." Jax began, planning to ask about it, but as the narcotic tore through his veins, he was dumbfounded, never having experienced such an intense high. Though some of his band mates had gone through various love affairs with smack, the hardest drug he'd ever tried was cocaine because he knew he would like heroine too much. And that extended to morphine. It was like an orgasm that he couldn't escape, and he didn't want to...or at least he wouldn't have wanted to if he didn't suddenly feel helpless as Hannah threw off her coat and climbed atop him.
She was wearing a lace corset with the breasts cut out, exposing hardened nipples that ached for him, and she was a gorgeous women. Her thick, chestnut hair spilled down over milky white shoulders in heavy curls, and her lips were full and luscious. Her beauty wasn't lost on Jax, but it didn't do anything for him either because she wasn't Dani. And any woman who wasn't Dani may as well have been a man in Jax's eyes.
His cock, however, had a different threshold, and when the doctor reached into his jeans and caressed it through his underwear, it sprung to life despite the wishes of its master.
"No," he protested, his voice small and weak, and with no control over his own body, he couldn't stop her. She laughed at him.
"It's okay," she taunted. "You're Jax Bonham. You were never meant to be the property of one woman."
"Please. No," he begged as he felt himself drifting in and out of consciousness from the drug, in and out of dreams where he was screaming and pushing her away to reality where he had no power to act. Then suddenly, he realized he was inside her.
"Dani," he breathed, a tear rolling down the side of his face and into his hairline as the doctor took what she wanted from him. He found himself in a deep, primal state, responding with pleasure even against his will, and when the doctor unzipped her corset and brought his hands to her breasts, he held them, his body operating on muscle memory as she rose up and fell hard down upon him.
"Oh, God, Jax," she moaned. "I've always wanted you. I've dreamed about you all my life, and then there you were, liberating us at the prison. You're all I've been able to think about since. This was meant to be. Divine providence."
"No," he argued, but he wasn't even sure if he really spoke the word or just dreamed it since the only part of his body that seemed to remain in the reality of the situation was his penis as it betrayed his heart.
"I love you, Jax," she cried. "Oh, God, I love you!"
I love you, too, Dani, he thought, his eyes closed tight, and as the doctor's body began to convulse with her orgasm, he felt his approaching.
"I'm coming," he breathed, but it wasn't born of excitement or pleasure. It was just a statement of fact, and the sensation barely registered as he released inside her.
"Oh, yes!" she screamed. "Yes! Jax! Yes!"
She bucked against him until his orgasm subsided, and his cock began to relax and withdraw. Then finally, it was over.
As he lay there, his muscles stiff, his breathing heavy, he opened his eyes and saw Dr. Gorely straddling him wearing nothing but her garter belt, and he felt sick. Though the orgasm on top of the drug made the urge to drift away so strong he could barely fight it, he had a sudden, brief moment of perfect clarity during which he remembered every detail of what had happened, and he hated himself for not fighting harder. Dani was going to be the wife he never cheated on, but now that was all shot to hell because no matter how he tried to explain this, he believed she would never understand.
"We'll do this again real soon, lover," the doctor said as she dismounted him, and the last thing he saw was her lips as they closed in to plant an unwelcome kiss on his lips just before everything went black.
Day 143
Liana
In the dungeon of the main lodge, as Dani sat watching Liana lie on a cot in her cage, she was suddenly besieged by a strong something is amiss in the universe feeling, and she needed to hear Jax's voice immediately. She called him, but he didn't answer.
"I'm sure he's fine," Liana said, impatient with Dani because of her history of unfounded jealousy.
"Then why isn't he answering?" she asked.
"I don't know. Have you called anyone from down here? We're underground. Maybe we don't have any reception."
"Hmmm," Dani grumbled as she dialed Aiden's number. He answered.
"Hello? Dani?"
"Sorry. I hit the wrong number," she lied.
"No problem, but as long as I have you, have you s
een Liana?" he asked. "She was supposed to be on a night patrol shift, but she won't answer her phone, and I can't find her anywhere."
"Ummm...I think she had to take her phone to Rena to be fixed earlier," Dani said, and because she was distracted by her concern for Jax, or rather what Jax might be doing in her absence, her words came off like the lie they were.
"I see," Aiden said.
"Yeah, so I wouldn't worry," she assured him.
"Okay. Well, if you see her, tell her I'm looking for her," he said.
"You got it," she said, and she hung up.
"What was that about?" Liana asked.
"Ah, nothing. Aiden wanted to know why you weren't answering your phone."
"Oh, good story. Can you call Rena and make sure she backs it up?"
"Yeah, no problem," Dani said, barely even listening. "Hey, I need to run to the cabin to check on Jax real quick. You'll be okay, right?"
"I don't know," Liana said. "What if I turn and break out?"
"How are you going to break out? If you turn, you might claw the shit out of the walls, but that's about it."
"Dani, I don't think it's a good idea," she said.
"Please, Liana. I feel like something's wrong. I promise I'll be right back, and if I can't get back, I'll send Savannah down here to watch you."
"Olivia's going to kill you if she finds out," Liana called after her as she headed down the hall to the elevator that would take her to Olivia's room. She didn't have to worry about being caught by Olivia because she was out on a mission, and nothing was going to happen anyway. They built the cage to keep in a large jungle cat. How much damage could a wolf do?
As Dani hurried up the road to her cabin to check on Jax, Aiden was heading toward the lodge. He had called Rena, who told him she didn't know anything about Liana's phone being broken, and because she had no idea that there would be any reason that Liana would want to hide from Aiden, she used the GPS to determine that Liana was somewhere in the main building.