by J. R. Ward
Flapping from inside the bathroom. Like the prisoner was giving some terry cloth a workout.
“I threw up when I came back and saw him. His blood was running out of the arteries I’d cut, making this dark semi-circle in the dirt, a new kind of head to replace the one I’d taken from him. The fan pattern reminded me of when my mahmen had homeschooled me and I’d learned about the Mississippi River and the way it dumps out into the Gulf of Mexico in this shell-like formation of silt under the seawater. I teared up at that point. Somehow that perfectly unimportant photograph from a geography textbook in my childhood was now permanently stained, sure as if the man I’d just murdered had reached his soon-to-be cold hand back through time and gotten his blood on the page. That contamination feels, right now at least, like it’s going to spread to every single memory of my happy family and the way things used to be before the raids. I feel like in killing him, I killed everything that was protected by the hard guard of That Which Was Before. Before the lessers murdered my mahmen and sire, I wasn’t like this. I was myself. I was no one who would ever kill anything, and my brother would never have dealt drugs to survive, and Chalen the Conqueror and that prisoner in your bathroom and you and this cabin are all a foreign land with a foreign language I will never, ever visit.”
Ahmare rubbed her face. “But it makes sense that I should lose something when I took his life. No matter what my reasoning or justifications, it was not mine to claim, and balance needs to be maintained. He’s dead now, and I’ve lost the previous version of me that I had kept so dear, the last vestige of my family.”
Dropping her hands, she looked at the Shadow. “So you’re right. I’m not cut out for this. I’d rather teach self-defense, and I do like pumpkin spice lattes. But here’s another truth. We don’t get to choose all our destinations, and however much I hate that I’m going to have to live with what I did to that drug dealer—and God only knows what else is going to happen—what I cannot and will not abide is doing nothing to save my brother. He’s all I have left, especially now that I’ve lost myself, and however imperfect he is, I’ll take him alive over the cosmic nothing I’ll have on this earth if Chalen kills him.”
There was a long pause as their eyes met.
Then the Shadow holstered that gun and turned away to the refrigerator. “You hungry? I got food we can pack up for you both.”
10
DURAN HADN’T BEEN ABLE to tolerate the warm water.
Turning the cheap faucet handle to the inscribed “H” had been a rusty habit. Stepping under the warmth and humidity had been unbearable. He’d lasted for a split second, his body tingling with unanticipated pleasure, before he’d cranked things to “C.”
The bad news about that decision revealed itself when he got out: Without any steam, the medicine cabinet’s cracked mirror had been as naked as he.
So he caught his reflection for the first time in over twenty years.
Unrecognizable. And that seemed apt.
His hair had been short and his face had been shaved when he’d been captured. Now, the apex of him was a garden overgrown, ropes of black cables falling from the crown of his head down around his shoulders, a beard extending from his jaw and chin well past his collarbones to his sternum. The only thing he saw that he recalled was the color of his eyes. Blue. Pale blue.
A dull, pale blue. Beach glass.
He had some passing thought that he needed to keep everything the way it was now. It felt camouflagey, this self-generated bush he could tuck himself behind. Faulty reasoning, that. Where he and that female were going, he was going to stand out like a sore thumb. A neon sign. A cackle in silence.
As his hand reached up to touch the beard, he watched it pull a stroke or two, feeling nothing of whatever texture was against his palm—hard and crinkly like it looked? Or fool-ya-again soft, in spite of the crimp?
He wasn’t sure who had told his arm to rise up. He’d certainly had no conscious thought of making the move.
Something to keep an eye on.
It was a relief to turn away. Towel off. Reach for the latch to open the flimsy door so he could step out. Some faulty part of his brain decided that his introspection was a function of the small lavatory, and provided he never entered that space again, he didn’t have to worry about getting trapped in that cognitive loop once more—which he needed to avoid because he knew where it would lead.
Memories of what had been done to him.
And then the resonance of his current reality: He was either dying or going back to Chalen.
But there wasn’t any contest between those two choices. He was going for the former, hard as a sprinter with a canine behind him.
Reemerging into the cabin’s interior, he realized he should have set some ground rules for Nexi being alone with the female. Considering what lay ahead, nothing good was going to come from scrambling Ahmare’s brain, and shit knew Nexi liked to rewire people—
The two females were standing shoulder to shoulder at the short counter in the galley, passing a package of salami back and forth. Then trading a dull knife to spread mustard and mayonnaise. Next came the plastic-baggie handoff.
They weren’t talking. Or looking at each other. But considering the alternative? Better than he’d expected.
“You know where you kept your clothes,” Nexi muttered over her shoulder.
“Thanks.”
He didn’t know what the hell he was thanking her for. It was more like an apology, except why he was I’m-sorry’ing the fact that he’d gotten hit on the head and had woken up on Chalen’s play table made no sense.
Because you were going to leave her anyway, he thought as he opened the lid of the trunk by the bed. And it seems like not only did she know that, but your lack of emotion may have hurt her.
Duran was quick with getting dressed, pulling on combat pants that had more pockets than slack surface area, as well as a long-sleeved shirt made of lightweight material, and combat boots with almost as much deep-dish tread as they had leather upper. Three of his holsters were in there. He left one behind. Seven of the guns he’d stolen were in there. He left three behind. His ammo belt was still missing two bullets in the lineup, the vacancies together in the middle like a pair of front teeth knocked out.
He couldn’t remember why he’d taken the pair out of order. What he’d shot at.
He couldn’t remember a lot of things. Which was what happened when you were keeping your eye on a prize.
Lots of things unrelated to your Kewpie doll got missed.
Hello, Nexi.
Duran bent down to close the trunk lid, and as he straightened, he wobbled thanks to a wave of dizziness.
“I wish there was time to feed,” he said to no one in particular. Being at his best strength would be a help.
Nexi laughed over at the counter. “I’m out.”
I didn’t ask, he thought, but kept that to himself. The fuel-to-fire ratio was already high just by his mere presence.
“ATV where I left it?” he said.
Nexi turned away from the food and went over to her worktable. Tossing a set of keys at him, she said, “Yes, and I just drove it yesterday. It’s gassed up.”
“Thank you.”
“You can quit that.”
The female, Ahmare, zipped up a backpack. “You’re sure we can borrow this?”
“It’s his anyway.” Nexi went to the door and opened it. “I’m keeping your SUV if you don’t come back. Think of it as rent for me taking care of his shit.”
“She’s not responsible for my actions,” he heard himself say.
“She is now.”
“It’s okay,” Ahmare said as she put a key fob on the counter. “That’s more than fair. And thank you for the food.”
Nexi ignored them both, staring pointedly out at what was left of the night. In the heartbeat of silence that followed, Duran felt like he needed to say something before he took off. The impulse was the same, he supposed, as when you dropped a glass on someone’s flo
or and were compelled to go for the paper towels.
“Don’t even think about it,” Nexi said tightly. “You want to do right by me, get the fuck out of here and take her with you.”
Odd the parallels in life, he decided as he walked out. When he’d left her the last time, he’d known he was going to see her again and had dreaded it. Now, he knew he wasn’t going to . . . and he dreaded that, too.
So much unsaid. So many amends that would never be made.
Why did people always learn things about themselves too late, he thought.
11
THE ATV COVERED THE increasingly rugged, but no less green, topography with the gait of a bucking bronco and the demureness of Sid Vicious.
As Ahmare held on to a pair of grips by the seat—because the other option was Duran’s body—she was bounced around, ass popping up and landing just off-center so many times she developed a core competency in median relocation. Worse, the scream of the engine was doing her nut in. The high-pitched, eardrum-rattling whine was too close in pitch to the anxiety that was vibrating through her body and her brain, the adrenaline load way over her limit.
She couldn’t handle one more second of delay. And yet here she was, close to dawn, with nothing but hours and hours of inactivity ahead of her while her brother was in Chalen’s custody. It was like a nightmare where you were trying to get home but obstacle after obstacle tripped you up: cars that broke down, blocked roads, missteps of direction followed by locked doors with keys that didn’t work.
When her brother hadn’t come back at dawn three nights ago, and then hadn’t answered his cell phone, posted anything on social media, or showed up by the following midnight, Ahmare had gone into his room in the apartment they shared and pulled open the bottom drawer of his dresser. There, in among his second-favorite concert T-shirts, semi-worn-out jeans, and that flannel button-down that was his go-to starting in September, was a Mead brand business envelope sealed and labeled in his messy handwriting.
“In Case of Emergency.”
About nine months before, just as he’d been leaving for the night, he’d told her he wanted to make sure she always knew where he was. She’d asked him what he thought cell phones were for, but Ahlan had gotten serious, for once, and told her about the envelope and where it was. She hadn’t thought anything further about it.
That was how she’d gotten in touch with Chalen. She’d called the ten-digit, out-of-state number, and after some routing, found herself talking to Ahlan’s “employer.”
She’d known her brother was dealing drugs. At first, when tightly rolled bundles of cash had started turning up in his pockets, and a new TV the size of an Olympic swimming pool had been delivered, she’d refused to look too closely at what he might be doing for a living. It had been one of those things, like his sex life with various women and females, that she resolutely refused to think about.
But then he’d started using.
The glassy eyes. The staccato speech. The growing paranoia.
And finally, a human male, Rollie, had begun stopping by.
She’d had to confront Ahlan about the man one night. As soon as that twitchy, toothless, stinky human had left, she’d had it out with her brother and he’d promised he was going to stop. Everything.
Five nights later, he disappeared.
Six nights later, she had opened the envelope. Made the call. Struck the deal.
Tracking Rollie, she had learned about the underage dealing, something that had made her sick because there was no way her brother hadn’t done that as well. Then the trailer and the beheading. The long trip to Chalen.
From the second she’d ended that initial call to the conqueror, she had measured time like a Rolex, aware that her brother was a trauma patient and she was the only one-man ambulance who could save him.
Hours counted. Seconds . . . counted.
Except now, after the double cross and Chalen’s new assignment of what was probably a suicide mission, she was back where she’d been as she’d tracked Rollie and tried to figure out how to kill him: Waiting with a bomb in her lap, the ticking minutes driving her crazy.
As she was whipped by branches and vines, taken deeper into the forest by a stranger, she tried to figure a way around losing time during the day.
She tapped Duran’s shoulder. When he didn’t respond, she tapped harder.
His bearded face turned to the side. Over the din, he said, “Almost there—”
“Stop!” she yelled. “Stop now!”
“. . . you hurt?”
She’d clearly missed the “Are” at the beginning of that. “We need to think about this! There has to be a way—”
As he ignored her, and refocused on the tangle ahead, she realized that if she made him halt just to have a conversation that went nowhere, she was only wasting the very thing she couldn’t stand losing—like a plane crash survivor in the desert using the last of her water to wash her face instead of drink.
But goddamn it, when the hell was she going to make any forward progress here?
Finally, he slowed. Stopped.
“Get off,” he said.
She was already on that, and she was also on the trigger to that collar—in the event this pre-dawn ride was merely an excuse to confirm her opinion about this damp, bug-ridden, leaf-choked place being where the bloated corpses of women were found. Or, in her case, females. Not that her remains would last long. Even with the canopy of vines and tree leaves overhead, the warning prickle on her skin told her that the sun was gathering momentum on its rise.
“We go on foot for the rest of the way.”
Ahmare was grateful as he took off at a jog, that backpack of his strapped on so tight, it was like the saddle on a horse, nothing loose and slappy.
The way he held off branches and ducked and dodged was impressive, and she found herself mirroring his movements, the two of them becoming dance partners to the tune of such classics as “Up in Smoke in Ten More Minutes,” “Where the Fuck Are We?” and the old standby “Jesus Christ, When Will We Get There.”
And then everything became darker and a little cooler as they hit a gradual rise.
The vines backed off and the tree trunks grew smaller and the canopy lifted enough so she wasn’t getting smacked in the face. Underfoot, there were rotting layers of decomposing leaves, a tiramisu of terrain.
Great, they’d gotten through the salad course. Now they were on to dessert.
Rocks now. Granite outcroppings with crevasses.
They were skirting the base of a mountain, cool air coming down from a summit that she could not see, the rivers of temperature change so distinct, she knew exactly when she entered and left them.
The prisoner stopped next to a rotting stump. Picking up two sticks, each about three feet in length, he laid one next to the other at an angle.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, looking up through the trees.
She blinked hard at the shockingly pale sky, her retinas yelling at her.
“Come on, this way.”
When she didn’t jump back into the run, he grabbed her hand and dragged her along as her eyes watered and her sight was limited to mostly blurry what-is-that.
The prisoner jerked her to a halt. “Squeeze through here.”
Trying to focus, she wondered what the hell he was talking about. There was no “here” that she could see, just a collection of massive boulders that seemed to have been dropped like balls from the hand of a god at the foot of the mountain they were going around.
“Here.”
He changed her angle, pulling her around to reveal . . . yes, there was a slice of a gap in there.
Ahmare went think-thin sideways, her windbreaker scraping the lichen on both front and back. Soon enough, the compression gave way to a larger hidden belly illuminated only by the fissure she’d gone through. When the prisoner joined her, she was so close to him, she got his hair in her face.
Click.
The flashlight he outed beamed aroun
d. “Just where I remembered.”
She had no clue what he was talking about. There was only more of the blackened rock wall of the narrow cave—
The prisoner reached up and dropped a camouflage drape that had been hooked into the stone, the heavy-duty fabric painted and stitched to disguise its true, man-made identity. Behind the folds, a stainless steel door streaked with the earthy blood of the forest gleamed like a mud puddle.
The prisoner punched something into a keypad mounted on the left side at waist height. There was no series of beeps. Nothing lit up. Nothing released, either.
“Damn it.” He repeated the sequence. “Come on—”
Like a sleeper who’d hit the snooze button, some kind of system woke up and there was a dull thunk followed by a slide that resonated too loudly for there to be much grease on whatever was moving.
The hiss was less air lock, more not-been-opened-in-twenty-years.
As Duran went in first, Ahmare wanted to be flashlighting things, but she had his trigger box in one hand and a gun in the other.
There was no telling what was in there, and she was taking no damned chances.
12
EXACTLY AS HE’D LEFT it, Duran thought as he stepped inside the bunker and motion-activated lighting came on.
The hideaway was a stainless steel room set into the base of the mountain, a proverbial bread box buried in the earth. He’d built and outfitted the place over the period of a year and a half, and the hideout had been crucial for his revenge plan. He’d stolen money from the cult’s vast resources to have it constructed, siphoning cash out of the cult’s vault and then paying humans, who had no idea they were working for a vampire, to complete the project. The electricity that fed it had likewise been purloined from the spiritual compound, miles of cable buried underground.