Sacrificial Muse (A Sabrina Vaughn Novel)

by Maegan Beaumont

  He fell to the side, onto his back, sightless eyes blinking rapidly against the last of the dying sun. No time. Keep moving.

  He rolled over, pushing the thing away from him, the thorns and stems protruding from its skin gouging and tearing at Michael’s hands. He found his knees and got them beneath him. Keep moving.

  Keep moving. Find Sabrina. Make sure she’s safe. He was dying and that was okay. That was fine …

  But not yet. Not until he kept his promise.

  EIGHTY-ONE

  Time was running out.

  She had no idea where she was, no clue as to how far she’d gone or in what direction she was walking. Not far. Even though it felt as if she’d walked for miles, every step causing the shrapnel in her thigh to bite and scream against muscle and bone, she’d gone less than a hundred yards.

  Behind her, Val started to cough again, a violent hacking that turned into a gut-twisting retch. She stopped, crouching in the dark, using her hands to find her friend. “Shh, it’s okay,” she said, stroking hair away from a face that was dry and hot. “We’re almost there. Almost home.” Lies—but lies she felt no guilt in telling. If Val was going to die, it wouldn’t be without hope, alone and trapped in the dark with nothing but the sound of her own breathing and the stench of her own biology to keep her company.

  Not like you, right, darlin’?

  That’s right. Not like me.

  She stood. Kept walking. Kept searching for the light, pulling Val behind her.

  Look there, darlin’. Light—you see it?

  She ignored the voice. Focused on putting one foot in front of the other, face tipped toward the ground, staring at feet she couldn’t see.

  Look at me, Melissa.

  Her neck craned itself up, lifting her head and eyes until she was staring straight ahead. A halo of light, thin and waning, carved into the dirt above her head—no more than fifteen yards away.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  The hard packed dirt of the garden maze gave way to loose gravel. Smooth stones, cool and gray. Michael collapsed into them, pressing his face and hands against them with a near sigh of relief. He was burning up. Each breath he took warned him it might be his last.

  The monster was still alive. He could hear it dragging itself along the path behind him, blood gurgling and bubbling from its ruined mouth, ragged breath whistling through its broken nose. As hard as he’d hit it, as much as he’d tried, he hadn’t killed it.

  A shadow loomed over him, high and wide. The building. He’d made it. Lifting his face, he opened his eyes, tried to blink away the thick film that coated them. Bright yellow blurs danced in front of his face, swaying alongside tall, hazy stalks. Flowers. Some type of garden …

  “Ares,” the thing behind him hissed, closer than it had a right to be. Turning over, he lifted his boot, striking out at it, unwilling to go easy. It’d found its feet, standing over him, casting a deeper shadow across his face. The thin, silver blade in its hand held high. Michael heard another scream, this one carried on a name: David.

  The monster twisted toward the sound, its face split in a gruesome, bloody grin. “Calliope—”

  Before the thing could say another word, it jerked and convulsed, some unseeable force slamming into it over and over. It swayed for a second before the blade fell from its hand to clatter into the rocks at its feet.

  It was her. Had to be …

  Michael twisted around, craning his head to see her. There was Sabrina, standing a few yards away, feet braced apart, hip dropped back to absorb the recoil of the gun she held in a two-fisted grip. Her dark auburn hair set on fire by the setting sun, eyes blazing … she dropped her arms, the gun falling to her side.

  And then she was gone.

  EIGHTY-THREE

  Another hatch. This one opened into the maze. The last of the late evening sun had pinched at Sabrina’s eyes as she threw the hatch open, and she had to look away for a moment to let her eyes acclimate to the light. Surrounded on three sides by sky-high hedges, there was only one way out.

  Valerie lay below her at the foot of the stairs—really no more than a ladder propped up under the hatch. She’d hoped to find Strickland, SWAT team in tow, crawling the grounds by now, but she was alone as far as she could tell. Another quick look at Val had her pulling Michael’s Kimber from the small of her back. Climbing the stairs, she lead with the barrel of her borrowed gun to do a quick sweep. No Strickland. No David.

  No Michael.

  Back down the stairs to loop the black satin cloth under Val’s armpits. “This is going to hurt,” she said, stroking a soft hand over her friend’s short cap of dusty black hair. “I’m sorry, but there’s no other way … ” Before she could think about it, she picked up the length of cloth and began to haul Val up the stairs. Val cried out against the pressure on her bones, coughing and gasping. “Almost there … almost there … ” She kept saying it over and over, forcing herself to pull and yank with everything she had until Val was topside, laid out in the dirt beside her, shaking and heaving against the pain.

  Struggling with the cloth, she unlooped it from under Val’s arms.

  If you’d rehabbed your leg like you were supposed to, this wouldn’t be so hard …

  “Said the guy who shot me in the first place.” It took her a moment to realize she’d answered him out loud, and it had her pulling on the knot so hard she nearly ripped the satin into useless shreds.

  Just statin’ facts, darlin’.

  She re-fashioned the satin back into a litter and worked Val onto it again, using the knotted loop as a handle. “I’m getting you out of here, Val. I promise,” she said as she stood, fitting the gun into her hand before she started to limp toward the only opening in the box of green she was surrounded by.

  There you go again, making promises you can’t keep …

  Ignore him. Keep walking.

  She passed beneath an archway, letting instinct lead her straight ahead despite the option to go right. What looked like a dead end suddenly cut to the right, and she rounded the corner to see the backside of the greenhouse. This time she went left, dragging Val, who’d gone still and quiet, behind her.

  Hold on just a bit longer …

  Sabrina rounded the corner of the building, the sight in front of her catching her breath and stalling her heart all at once, creating a perfect storm of immobile silence.

  Michael … or at least she thought it was Michael. Sprawled out in the rocks, half covered by the looming shadows of the greenhouse, was a man. She almost cried out. Almost ran to him …

  David dragged himself from the mouth of the maze. He looked like some sort of demon, covered in scaly leaves and thorny spikes, blood running from his battered face, clumps of dirt coating patches of his exposed skin. He managed to pull himself up on two legs, swaying above Michael, hissing something she couldn’t understand through a mouth that didn’t work right. Michael rolled over, kicked out even as David lifted his scalpel.

  “David.” She screamed the name, watching him turn, his trunk twisting toward the sound even as she pulled the trigger. The bullets hit him center mass, a tight cluster in the middle of his chest. He staggered back, the scalpel clattering into the rocks at his feet.

  You’ll never be able to save them both.

  Val first, then Michael. Get them into the car and drive—

  Tires crunching on gravel. A lot of them. The faint whoomp, whoomp of helicopter blades … She dug out the flattish disc she’d stuck in her pocket. The light, no longer flashing red, was a solid green.

  Help had arrived.

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  So much about her had changed over the years. Her name. Her face. Even the person she was meant to be was gone, leaving behind someone she barely recognized. But her hands … her hands had remained the same. Large hands for a woman, wide palms with long, tapered fingers. They�
��d done things. Things she wasn’t proud of. Things she couldn’t forget. Things that had saved her, kept her family safe. But looking at them, she realized they were the same hands she’d used to carry plates of eggs and sausage when she’d been nothing more than a young, pretty waitress in Jessup.

  She ran a thumb over the back of her hand, across the smooth, star-shaped scar she’d had since she was barely more than a girl, raising her eyes just enough to see Michael’s hand, laying still against the pale blue blanket draped across the hospital bed. A hand like hers. Capable of anything if it meant safeguarding something you loved. She reached for it, wanting to feel its warm weight in her own. Needing it to remind herself that he was okay. They both were.

  “Miss Vaughn.”

  Her head jerked up, aiming her gaze at the man standing in the doorway. Even though she’d never met him, she recognized him instantly. Livingston Shaw had the same lake-blue eyes and guilelessly handsome features as his son.

  He gave her a fatherly smile as he eased himself into the room, motioning for the pair of thugs in three-piece suits to wait for him in the hall. “I think what’s to be said here is best kept between us, don’t you?”

  She didn’t speak, didn’t take her eyes off the man in front of her. She stood, hands clenched into fists as she instinctively inched closer to the bed Michael lay in, ready to do more things she wasn’t proud of if it meant keeping him safe.

  “Nothing to say?” the man said, settling himself into a chair across from her. “It’s quite alright, I understand. I’m sure the picture of me painted by my son and Mr. O’Shea has been less than favorable.” He pinched the crease in his trousers at the knee and straightened it, flicking away an invisible speck of lint before he looked at her and smiled. “You’re quite important to both of them, you know. Benjamin went through great lengths to hide you from me—I don’t think I’ve ever seen him work harder at anything that didn’t involve wasting my money. And Michael … ” His gaze drifted to the man stretched out between them. “Well, I can only imagine what his reaction would be if he knew that you’d called me.”

  “I didn’t call you,” she said quietly, doing her best to control the fear that squeezed her gut. “Where’s Ben?”

  “Benjamin is otherwise engaged at the moment,” he said, the smile on his face slipping just a bit. “And you did call me.” He held the round, silver tracking beacon she’d slipped into her pocket before entering the maze between his thumb and forefinger. “Who did you think would come when you pushed this button, Miss Vaughn? Did it even occur to you that doing so would completely undo all of my son’s hard work?”

  “To be honest, I hadn’t given it much thought,” she said, the lie flowing smoothly despite the fact that her stomach was doing flip-flops. In that split second before she pressed the disc’s slightly domed top, she’d known that doing so would end whatever anonymity she’d enjoyed where Livingston Shaw was concerned.

  And she hadn’t cared.

  She forced herself to relax, sitting in the chair she’d recently vacated, stretching her legs out in front of her, ignoring the pain that shot through her thigh. “I did what needed to be done. I’m sure Ben understands.”

  “I seriously doubt that.” He chuckled softly. “But he no longer has a choice in the matter, does he?”

  Not trusting her voice, Sabrina just shrugged, folding her hands over her stomach.

  Her nonchalant reaction seemed to amuse him. “He’s worried about your safety. What I might do with you now that I know who and what you are … ” The smile on his face widened, his blue eyes sharpening to a razor’s edge. “Perhaps you and I can work together to put his fears to rest.”

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  She was back in the woods. The unnatural quiet of them, the heavy silence of animals crouching in the brush, hiding from something bigger. Something ruthless and evil.

  “You keep bringing us back to this place, darlin’ … you even understand why?”

  She didn’t turn around. Didn’t have to. She’d known he was there. Wade would always be there. Like a cancer in her brain that she could never cut out. “This is where I killed you.”

  “A lot of death happened here. Lot of blood in this dirt. Lot of screams trapped in these trees … ” She could hear the smile in his voice, like the memories his words invoked were fond ones. “But you didn’t kill me, Melissa. You just opened the door, you know that.”

  She turned, made herself look at him. “You’re nothing more than the personification of my survivors’ guilt. You’re dead, Wade. You’re dead and gone, and I’m crazy.”

  He laughed at her, his ruined face—torn bits of muscle and bone hanging from tendon—dripping gore onto the front of his uniform. “Is that any way to talk to the guy who saved your bacon? You might be crazy, darlin’, and I might be dead, but I ain’t gone. I’m inside you … so deep, you’ll never dig me out.”

  She felt a terrible reverberation in his words. A truth she pushed away as soon as she heard it. “Why did you help me? Val and Michael—why did you help me save them?”

  Wade gave her that boyish grin, reaching out to touch her, trailing a cold fingertip down her cheek. “Because you’re mine. I’m the only dead you’re allowed to carry, darlin’. I’m the only one who gets you forever … ”

  She jerked away from the weight of his hand, her eyes snapping open, shrinking away from the outstretched arm in front of her.

  Michael was watching her, eyes dulled by medication, the color of sun-bleached concrete. “You’re dreaming,” he murmured.

  Guilt. Shame. Denial … She felt it all in a split-second before she scrubbed a heavy hand over her face, trying to brush it off like dirt. “How are you feeling?” She gave him a smile. “Want me to get the nurse?” she said, ignoring the fact that those gray eyes of his seemed to see inside her. Like he could hear the ghost that rattled around inside her head.

  Michael shook his head. “No … Val?”

  He’d been asking about her every time he woke, and she gave him a reassuring nod. “She’s okay. Better than, actually. She wants to go home—keeps threatening to check herself out, against medical advice.”

  He smiled a bit. “Reminds me of someone … ” The smile slipped away and he turned his head, looking up at the ceiling. “Should be with her. Not here.”

  He was already trying to push her away. He didn’t want her here, she knew that, but she wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet. “They took her in for another round of tests so I had a few minutes.” Pretending he didn’t know that she’d been here for over an hour.

  “You shouldn’t be here.” He looked at her again, his eyes gone from faded gray to something darker. “It isn’t safe.”

  This was it. Her moment to tell him that she’d been riding around in Ben’s pocket this entire time. That there was no longer any such thing as safe for her. Not where Livingston Shaw was concerned. The moment slipped away, like so many others, and she let it. Let him believe that there was still something worth fighting for. Instead she captured his hand and brought it to her lips, pressing them to knuckles that were bruised and swollen before she stood, producing the thick manila envelope she’d found on the seat of her car.

  The moment his eyes touched on it, Michael turned his face away, pulling his hand from her grasp. “I was wondering if he’d actually have the balls to give it to you.”

  “Balls really aren’t something Croft finds in short supply.” She shrugged, tossing the envelope onto the foot of the bed. “I didn’t read it.”

  He looked back at her. “Why not?”

  Sabrina caught his gaze with her own and held it. “Because nothing it says matters to me.”

  He shook his head, his mouth a grim line slashed across his face. “I tried to tell you—that night in Jessup when I left with Lark—I tried, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “I know.”

  “T
his is never going to work between us.” He reached out, playing his fingers across the back of her hand. “No matter how much I want it to. Do you know that too?”

  She didn’t answer him. “I brought you something else,” she said, pulling his Kimber from beneath her jacket. She pressed it into his hand before tucking it under the covers. “Don’t let the nurses catch you with it. They get nervous around armed patients.”

  His hand shifted beneath the covers, tightening on the grip of the gun. “Thank you,” he whispered, his throat working against the words, turning them into gravel. He wasn’t thanking her for the return of his property, and they both knew it.

  She nodded once, the corner of her mouth lifting for just a moment. “Thanks for letting me borrow it.”

  Michael finally smiled at her, his face softening just a bit. “Loving you is gonna give me a complex,” he said as his eyes drifted closed again. He wasn’t asleep. He just didn’t want to watch her leave.

  Sabrina leaned in, pressing her mouth to his for just a moment so she could take the smile with her. “That makes two of us.” She straightened. “See you around,” she said before she turned and walked out the door.

  Peggy Coleman Photography

  About the Author

  Maegan Beaumont is a native Phoenician, currently stuck in suburbia with her high school sweetheart and husband, Joe, along with their four children. She writes take-you-to-the-edge-of-your-seat thrillers and loves action movies and spending time with her family. When she isn’t busy fulfilling her duties as Domestic Goddess, she is locked in her office with her computer, her coffee pot, and her Rhodesian Ridgeback and one true love, Jade.

  Acknowledgments

  There are so many people without whom this book would not have been possible. My fantastic husband, Joe, who’s never too tired to rinse the dinner dishes, even when it’s my turn, and who still likes to hold my hand, even when it’s freezing. My beautiful kids, who eat more pizza than they should and never complain about having to fish clean socks out of the laundry hamper. My wonderful friends, who still love me when I stand them up for lunch (I’m looking at you, Susana!) and who offer me an endless bounty of love and encouragement. My loud, crazy family—you’re the reasons I am the way I am … and for that I thank you! My canning wife, Melissa, thank you for sharing the joys of motherhood with me and for forgiving me when I cheat on you.