by J. R. Ward
There had only ever been one thing for him, and that was not settling down with a female.
Still, a part of him didn’t want to see that Nexi didn’t care—or, worse, was happy—about what had been done to him. He was also ashamed, even though she wasn’t aware of any details of his captivity. Back when he’d known the Shadow, when they had worked on their escape, he’d been solid about who he was and what his purpose had to be. Now? This mission that was taking him back to where they’d been held, so long the only goal he’d ever had, abruptly felt like there were two strangers in on the action.
The female he’d just met.
And himself.
“I didn’t throw any of it out,” Nexi said. “Your shit, that is. It’s all where you left it.”
“Thank you.”
“I was just lazy. It wasn’t to honor your memory or anything.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
Nexi muttered something that didn’t carry. And then she addressed Ahmare. “You need to hide that SUV. My garage is through there.” She pointed to two tire tracks barely noticeable in the kudzu. “I’ll open it for you. You’re going to leave me the keys in case I want to use it—or decide to chop it up when both of you don’t come back.”
Nexi dematerialized, up-and-gone’ing it, and Duran looked at his female—
The female, he corrected in his head. He looked at the female. At Ahmare.
“We’re going to need to camp out overday. There’s no way we can get where we need to go before dawn because I can’t dematerialize.” He tapped his collar. “This is steel.”
“Goddamn it.” The female glanced at the sky like she was measuring the distance the sun was going to have to spin overhead in millimeters. “That’s twelve hours.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“The hell there isn’t. You can tell me where to go and I can do this myself.”
“You won’t make it out of there alive.”
She stepped right up to him. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“You don’t have the access codes or the layout to the compound. The Dhavos will know the second you set foot on his property and he’ll have you headfirst in a grave before you can get one shot off.”
“Dhavos?” She frowned. “Wait . . . this is a cult?”
“Set up sixty years ago.” Duran shut that door himself. “Back when humans were tuning in and dropping out, the Dhavos took inspiration and created a Utopia underground. Like most megalomaniacs, he cared less about enlightenment and more about being worshipped by a captive audience, but he managed to convince about two hundred wayward codependents to join him on a bullshit spiritual journey that culminated in servitude—and not of the holy variety. He’s a rapist and a murderer and he pays for everything by selling heroin and cocaine to humans who live below the poverty line.”
“I thought dhavids were illegal under the Old Laws. The Scribe Virgin never allowed them.”
“You think anyone cares about that out here? Why do you think he put the colony in all these goddamn bushes.”
“So we’re close.”
“Not close enough to make a go during the night we have left. Come on, before Nexi changes her mind.”
Except the female didn’t move. Ahmare just glared around the clearing as if she had X-ray vision and was convinced a good, sharp stare would reveal the colony’s entrance.
Duran slapped a sting on his ass and felt a young’s satisfaction as he flicked the dead bug off his butt cheek. But when he did the same on his left pec and then his right shoulder, there was no more feeling superior over killing something smaller than him.
“I’m getting eaten alive. Do what you want with this vehicle, but Nexi isn’t going to like it if you don’t put it where the sun don’t shine—and she tends to blow up things she doesn’t like.”
Something he might keep in mind.
Ahmare’s pale eyes locked on him. “I’m bringing all my weapons with me.”
“Okay, but keep them holstered. Nexi is not going to appreciate any aggression and she’ll deal with it in a way that require stitches.”
“You know a lot about her.”
“Not really.” He clapped his palm on the side of his throat. “Come on, we’ve still got some distance to go and I don’t like the look of the horizon.”
A subtle glow was kindling in the east, the kind of thing that a human might think of as the harbinger of a new day, the pretty precursor to a peach-and-pink departure party not just for night but for the storm clouds that were retracting from the sky as well.
He wished the damn things would stay put for another hour or two. They needed time, instead of some false show of optical-only optimism that would burn them both to a crisp.
Ah, the romance.
9
THE CABIN WAS OLD and small. The covert security measures were new and plentiful.
Ahmare would have been impressed under different circumstances.
Each of the four windows had iron bars and steel mesh—although only on the inside so as not to attract attention. The front door had no doubt been wooden when the place had been built, but that flimsy option had been swapped out for a reinforced steel vault panel. Motion detectors and security cameras had been mounted in each of the corners, and more mesh covered the walls, ceiling, and floor, ensuring that no vampire could dematerialize into the interior.
She was willing to bet there was an escape hatch somewhere, a way to get underground, but damned if she could find it.
“I’m going to use your shower,” the prisoner told Nexi.
He—Duran—didn’t wait for a yes or no—or for directions, not that there was any question where the running water was located. He just walked into the closet-sized loo and shut the door.
A low rushing hum came on immediately and suggested he wasn’t wasting time, and she appreciated that. But him being efficient with the soap and water wasn’t going to affect the velocity of the daylight hours. They were still going to take forever, like a bone healing on a human.
Weeks . . . months. Before mobility could once more be had. Or at least it was going to feel like that.
Ahmare looked across at the Shadow. That the female was watching her, all hunter-tracking-prey, was not a news flash, but come on. And one of the two guns with those laser sights was still palmed.
“You mind putting your weapon back in that holster,” Ahmare said.
“You’re not in a position to make demands.”
“If I was going to come at you, I would have already.”
“Tough talk.” The Shadow didn’t seem to blink, those black eyes so steady, it was as if they were made of glass, like the lens of a camera. “You like old Schwarzenegger movies? Bet that’s the closest you’ve ever gotten to a real fight.”
Ahmare made a show of checking out the interior again. The fact that the Shadow had figured out she was a teacher, not an actual fighter, seemed like a portent of failure. Sure, she had been trained in self-defense after the raids, and she had been teaching those skills to others at gyms up in Caldwell. But that was not the same as being a soldier.
Don’t think like that, she told herself. What was the saying? ‘Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re right’?
The furniture was all also-ran afterthought. Mattress on a wooden stand. Travel trunk with the lid down. Table and two chairs that were handmade, but not by someone who cared about how things looked. Then again, this bolt-hole was about war: A workstation housed gun-cleaning supplies and stones to sharpen daggers and knives. Holsters for various weapons hung on pegs. Bomb detonators and sniper rifle tripods lined various shelves.
“You ever kill somebody before,” the Shadow asked. “I’m just curious.”
“Yes,” Ahmare said roughly.
“Oh, fancy. You didn’t like it, though, did you? What didn’t work for you? The mess? You seem like someone who doesn’t like messes.”
This is just a conversat
ion, Ahmare told herself. Given what I’m going to face, this is nothing. No problem. Just words.
“Or is it the guilt.” The Shadow leaned back against the mesh-covered wall of the cabin, crossing one combat boot over the other. “Yeah, I’m guessing you don’t like the weight of the dead around your neck. The memories hang like a heavy chain right on your sternum and make it harder to breathe. When you close your eyes, the smell of the fresh meat and gunpowder comes back to you and chokes you. It’s all about being robbed of air at the end of the day, isn’t it. No more air, no more life. Both for you . . . and him. It was a him, wasn’t it. You couldn’t kill a young or another female, I don’t think. You don’t have it in you.”
Ahmare’s eyes went to the closed door of the bathroom.
Hurry, she thought.
“So who was it? Who’d you send to the Fade.”
The Shadow started to flip her gun up and down, casually tossing it and catching the weight as if she controlled every single molecule in the weapon, in herself . . . in the whole world. She seemed, as the Beretta caught air and returned to her palm again and again, to be in charge also of gravity . . . of time itself.
That confidence was captivating in the way of a cobra. Hypnotic because it was—
The Shadow pointed the gun directly at Ahmare’s chest. “Answer my fucking question.”
—deadly.
Those black eyes flashed peridot, and Ahmare knew with absolute certainty that she was going to fail at getting Chalen’s beloved back to him. The Shadow was right. She was a classroom chump, a videogamer who excelled in an armchair but was going to be picked off first in the actual field of conflict.
All target practice, no tried-and-true.
She thought of her brother and mourned him like he was already dead.
The Shadow smiled, flashing long white fangs. “Poor little girl lost in the wood. You think Duran’s your hero? You think he’s going to rescue you? Let me tell you that he won’t. That male is going to desert you when it counts and you’re going to end up dead in a place where your kin won’t find the body. If you’re smart, you’ll back that SUV out of my garage and get gone. For someone like you, it’s better to admit defeat up front than be forced into a failure that puts you in the Fade. At least if you cry uncle now, you’ll still be able to enjoy pumpkin spice lattes and the last season of The Big Bang Theory in September—while you’re working out at the gym and shooting targets on the range—”
“You’re wrong,” Ahmare blurted.
“About what?” The Shadow started flipping the gun again, like she had to do something to stave off boredom. “Do tell, on the outside chance I can learn something new about you. But you should know that I catch liars like fish in a stocked pond. And I like to eat them.”
“It wasn’t a gun. There was no gunpowder.”
Those eyes flicked over. Before the Shadow could interrupt, Ahmare found herself speaking in a direct voice.
“And I don’t know what I’ll see or smell when I close my eyes because I killed him just after nightfall tonight.”
She thought of Chalen wanting to know what it had felt like. When she had denied him the story, failed to fulfill his greed, it had been an act of defiance in a situation she had no leverage over.
Now, she spoke through a tight throat to prove herself.
And not to the Shadow.
“I spent the night before watching the human,” she said. “He lived with two other males, but he worked alone, outside of town in a trailer in the woods. I tracked him to his lab. He made meth, I guess. What else could he be doing with all those filthy tubs and chemicals?”
“What did you use,” the Shadow said. “If not a gun, then what.”
Ahmare reached to her hip. “This knife. Chalen wanted proof he was dead.”
“What did you cut off?”
“His head.” Ahmare licked her lips with a dry tongue in hopes of getting the syllables unstuck from the sides and roof of her mouth. “I was waiting for him out at the trailer. I spent most of the day practicing in my mind how it would all happen, but nothing went like I thought it would. He had cleared the field around the trailer to get a clean shot at anyone who came on the property—so I had to lay flat on top of the roof, on the far side of the slight tilt. It was hot. The asphalt shingles were like a griddle from being in the sun all day and my palms were sweaty. Maybe that was the fear, too, although I’m not sure what I was more worried about. That he would show up or that he wouldn’t.”
Everything was so crystal clear, the memories like the glare of chrome, making her eyes and her head hurt even though this was all just a tape played backward, a book’s passage being read instead of written.
“I dematerialized behind him after he got out of his car. I don’t know how I did it. My plan had been to slit his throat before he knew I was there, but he sensed me immediately and wheeled around. His eyes were wide and glassy—he was clearly high and that’s the only reason I got the job done. He was sloppy with his defenses. I was sloppy with the attack. I stabbed at air instead of his chest because he jerked to the left, and then I sliced his shoulder. He went for his gun. I caught him in the forearm . . .”
She closed her eyes. Reopened them immediately. “I dropped the knife. It just popped out of my hand because of the sweat. As it turned out, that was how I took him down. My hands functioned better when there was nothing in them. I punched him in the side of the head. Then I broke his nose. There was blood everywhere. I kicked him in the groin. As soon as he fell facedown on the ground, I got on his back and I didn’t let him up. My body . . . it knew what to do.”
Ahmare looked at the Shadow. “I watched me submit him. I know that sounds weird, but I swear, I was standing five feet away from myself when I got his throat in the crook of my elbow and started strangling him.” She moved her arm into that position, pulling up her sleeve, clasping her wrist, and making like she was pulling back. Then she released the hold on herself and looked at where she had just gripped. “I have bruises right here.”
She turned her arm around so the Shadow could see the purple and blue marks. “When I was driving down here, my wrist ached and I couldn’t figure out why. But I have my own handprint in my flesh.”
Dimly, she was aware that the Shadow wasn’t tossing the gun anymore.
“I think he was still alive when I rolled off of him.” Ahmare put her arm behind her back, hiding her wrist like that could erase what she’d done. “I mean, he was breathing or at least seemed to be, but he was limp and both of his pupils were fixed and dilated when I turned him over. I sat back in the dusty dirt and caught my breath. Something told me I had to decide what I was going to do then, which was nuts. I had already decided what I had to do. I had spent all day thinking about the steps I needed to take. Yet I hesitated.”
She curled her nose. “He smelled bad. His blood was flowing down the lower part of his face and all over his T-shirt, and it was like rotten eggs, all sulfur and rot from the drugs. I told myself he wasn’t going to survive long anyway. I told myself that he sold shit to kids that, even though they were only humans, didn’t need that kind of thing anywhere near them. I told myself . . . that he was the reason my brother was in Chalen’s custody. That what the two of them stole from the conqueror was this male’s fault, not Ahlan’s.
“None of that seemed to matter when it came down to it. I still don’t think I had a right to take his life. A person’s heartbeat is their own property. Even thieves and murderers get that gift from the Creator. And I knew . . .” She touched her sternum. “I knew, deep in here, that if I killed him, I was no better than he was. I was the drug dealer to children. I was a corrupter, too.”
“So what made you follow through on it?” the Shadow prompted.
Ahmare shivered and put her arms around herself even though the air inside the cabin was warm and a little stale.
“That’s the scariest part,” she said.
“How so.”
She met the other female
in the eye. “I don’t know what made me do it, and that is terrifying because it makes me think there’s something ugly inside of me that I can’t control. I tell myself, so I don’t get scared I’m a monster, that maybe destiny was using my body as a tool, that the human was somehow getting his due. Or that maybe it was only because I had practiced things so many times in my head, and as long as I never think like that again, I’ll never do something like that again. All I know for sure is that I watched my hand reach out and pick up my knife from the dirt. I didn’t even wipe the hilt or the blade off. I left all the grit that clung to my sweat on the rubber and the blood on the metal where it was. It helped my grip, I guess, and what did it matter whether the steel was clean or not?” Her lids went down again, but she couldn’t bear the images she saw. “I only needed one hand for the front of the throat, but getting through the spinal cord required two and all my strength. Stupid me, I was trying to cut bone instead of finding the juncture between two vertebra. I fixed that by angling the blade differently. And then I felt the knife go into the soft earth on the far side.”
The shower went off behind the door, and Ahmare started to rush through the story. This was too private to talk about in front of anyone else—and what a strange thing to think given she didn’t know this Shadow any better than she knew the prisoner.
“I forgot a bag.” She stared at the scuffed floorboards of the cabin. “All my preparation . . . and I forgot to bring something to put the head in. That’s how I found out what was inside the trailer. I’d left my Explorer about ten miles away, in the parking lot of a strip mall full of outlets. If I dematerialized there with a dripping . . . well, the shops were closed, but humans are everywhere, even after dark. So I went inside the trailer. The place was filthy and toxic, but there was a box of Glad trash bags by the sink. I took two, put one inside the other, and went back out to the body. For some stupid reason, I felt guilty I’d only left him one more bag in that box, but really? That was what I was going to apologize to him for? And like he’d ever cleaned up that trailer of trash?”