He nodded as he carefully reached into his pocket. “In this world, you learn to be prepared. At all times.” His voice had lowered until it became a raspy, sexy drawl that sent shivers straight through her.
“Prepared?” she echoed, scoffing softly. “This is crazy, you know.” She was still trying to hold him at an emotional, and physical, distance, but she was failing miserably.
“You’ve been known to get me a little crazy,” he whispered as his hand slid around to the back of her neck. He gazed deeply into her eyes before he distracted her with a very slow, very sensuous kiss that took her to a whole new level of need.
“I don’t want to die while I’m . . . naked,” she repeated, trying to maintain some semblance of sanity. But she gasped when her sensitive nipples brushed his naked chest. It was sheer, exquisite sensation. “And definitely not while we’re- You know . . . ” Her final protest died away, became a moan of unbridled pleasure as he drew her slowly down over his rigid manhood. He understood perfectly well that she ached for more and he thrust deeper, filling her completely and causing her to breathe his name as if it were some divine invocation.
“You’re not dying today,” he murmured with his lips pressed against her ear, his breathing becoming ragged from his own need. “Unless it’s from satisfaction.”
Soon they were kissing like there was no tomorrow. A hundred, even a thousand, hunters could have come along, but they wouldn’t have been aware of it.
Dalin knew her well. He loved her well and before long his hand was softly covering her mouth, reminding her of silence as he slowly drove her to the brink of a precipice that sent her into a freefall of mindless, blissful oblivion.
Exhausted after three hours of long, grueling travel, Cayla and Dalin were sheltering in an old brick house that looked like it had been abandoned for at least half a century. Vines were covering the walls and part of the roof had collapsed. There were no signs of hunters, but they still had found no food.
“It hasn’t warmed up today at all,” Cayla said, rubbing her arms briskly with her hands.
“No, it hasn’t,” Dalin said as he peered carefully out the window. “We were lucky we were able to find warmer clothes, though.”
After a silence, Cayla joined him at the window and asked, “You never told me how long were you a soldier.”
“Twelve years.”
“So that’s why you always use those military hand signals.”
“It gets to be a habit,” he said. “Something I don’t even think about.”
He had spent the morning teaching her signals as they’d walked because he thought they might come in handy somewhere down the road. They hadn’t run into any active hunters, but they saw a lot of dead ones. That was just as disturbing because they realized it was probably the work of Meng’s men. So they remained extra vigilant.
Knowing they needed to find food soon, they set out again, worn down as much from the cold as from hunger. They stumbled across more hunters. Some of them were badly mutilated or hacked to pieces. Some were still alive, if that’s what you could call it, but unable to move. They came across a lot of heads stuck on poles. It was a gruesome discovery, one that always made Cayla turn away.
They smelled the smoke before they saw it. When they cautiously topped a rise, they saw that the fire was still burning. An entire house was engulfed in flames below them. Cayla stood back in the shelter of the trees, the flames mirrored in her eyes. Against the yellow glare, she could see dark figures standing around watching the fire. There were half a dozen men that they could see. The roof collapsed with a loud whoosh and sparks shot upward into the low-hanging branches of the trees.
The men were not only coarse and profane, but they laughed gleefully at the destruction. From what Cayla could tell they were burning the house not only because they were torturing some hunters that were trapped inside, but they were burning out of pure wantonness. With no restraints to keep them in check, some men were like that. She had learned that lesson a long time ago.
“We need to get out of here,” Dalin whispered.
Cayla edged backward slowly. When one of the men down by the house turned his face suddenly in her direction, she crouched down instantly, trying to be as still and as silent as possible. Staying low, she inched her way back toward the deeper woods, slipping once on the muddy ground. She took another step. The leaves suddenly gave way beneath her and she tumbled backward, sliding downhill all the way to a damp creek bed. She knew that the mud coating her jeans was the least of her worries. She’d fallen a long way and she couldn’t even see Dalin.
When she braced herself on a fallen tree to rise, her hand came down on something soft and spongy. Something slimy. She scrambled immediately to her feet and backed away from the decaying hunter that was partially concealed under the leaves. It wasn’t moving. It was staring up into the trees with wide, colorless eyes. Without taking her eyes from the hunter, Cayla dropped down and wiped her hand on the leaves. Looking up, she tried to get her bearings and was startled when dead twigs snapped behind her. She whirled around, realizing that she wasn’t alone.
It was Dalin. He had seen her fall. He had come to find her.
He gave her a hand signal at the same moment that a man emerged from the trees to their left. And then another man appeared to the right.
“I’ll take care of them,” Dalin called to her. “Go hide.”
She obeyed because she trusted him. She obeyed because the tone of his voice demanded it.
The first man moved forward for an immediate attack, but Dalin was ready with his knife. The man didn’t have time to cry out as Dalin drove the knife deeply into his heart. The man sank to his knees and toppled over. The second man lunged forward like an enraged bear. Dalin kicked his leg out from under him and brought his knife down again before he could make any more noise. But it was too late. The other men had already been alerted and they were swarming through the woods like a disturbed hornet’s nest.
Chapter 10
“Addy!”
Gage’s tense whisper woke her in the darkness. She sat up immediately, still half asleep, but ready, out of habit, for a fight with hunters.
She scurried quickly to the back wall of the cave with Gage and heard the sounds of a struggle outside. Heavy breathing. Grunts. Yells. Leaves rustling. The noises grew louder till they were right on top of them. Something catapulted over the edge of the rock ledge. They heard enraged snarls and knew it was a hunter. The crashing of brush stopped soon after the hunter disappeared from sight.
The same thing happened all over again. First came the sounds, and then another hunter appeared briefly beyond the mouth of the cave. It plummeted and quickly vanished just as the first one had.
“Holy shit!” they heard. “Did you see that one?”
There was raucous laughter. “It’s caught in that tree. Just like a shish kabob.”
Not far from the entrance of the cave, the impaled walker flailed about in mid-air, helplessly dangling and skewered straight through the middle by a tree branch.
Two men traded jokes now as they stood on the ledge above them, apparently finding the plight of the trapped hunter highly amusing.
“Just like runnin’ cattle,” one of them said.
“We’re done here, ain’t we?” the other man asked. “Meng said we were supposed to clean these woods out and leave a lot of signs behind when we did. I don’t see any more of ‘em. That ought to be good enough for the pasty-faced bastard.” After a silence, he said, “All them heads on poles ought to make him happy.”
After another silence, they heard, “What do you think she was?”
They were obviously talking about the impaled hunter, who was a female.
“I don’t know, but look at them tits. They must have been something before all this started.”
The other man snorted with disgust. “You’d fuck anything. You’re a sick bastard, you know that?”
“Come on, you mean to say you never thought of ‘em t
hat way?”
“No. Never.”
In the silence that followed, they heard the sound of a zipper being undone.
“You taking another leak?” the first man asked.
“No,” came the answer.
“Hell, is that all you ever think about? Do you really have to do that now?”
“Why not,” came the reply. There was a breathless quality to the second man’s voice now. “Nothing to stop us from doing whatever we want to . . . whenever . . . ” His voice ended in a low, drawn-out groan.
“I’m not like you. I can wait till something better comes along. Something warm.”
“Can’t always find a live one . . . ohhh . . . ”
“I’m going to sit over here,” the voice of the first man grew louder. “And enjoy the view.” A pair of legs dropped over the edge of the cave entrance. “Let me know when you’re finished. I never knew anyone who got a hard-on from looking at ranks.”
“Like . . . to . . . try one . . . just once,” the second voice panted.
The man sitting over the cave entrance muttered under his breath, “Just like a freakin’ animal.”
Addy closed her eyes, disgusted and embarrassed as the groans and moans intensified. Finally they stopped. There was a quick zip and shortly after that the leaves rustled.
“Funny, ain’t it?” she heard. “We should come back sometime and see if she’s still wiggling around on that tree branch.”
“Your girlfriend can’t move around much,” the other man commented without emotion. “Maybe the birds’ll start pecking at her. That’d be something to see.”
The men finally moved off and the people in the cave waited a long time to make sure that they were gone for good.
Addy stood in the cave entrance, staring out. She was clearly upset as she watched the helpless hunter. “She was someone’s daughter,” Addy said. “Maybe someone’s mother. She deserves better. She never asked for any of this.”
Gage looked down at Addy. He glanced over at Anna and Emily before he said, “I’ll get her down somehow.”
Farran reacted as if she had just received a physical blow. She doubled over and had to force herself to breath. She had been following Beck in the shadows. Why? Because she had been building a fantasy of a chance encounter, a memorable one that would lead to a passionate, though completely unexpected, realization of just how much they wanted each other. Beck would take her with passion and with tenderness, after dramatically confessing that he had been trying to resist her for a very long time, but that he could not fight the battle any longer.
But this- this was not what she had been expecting. Had he not sought her out many times in the darkness when no one else was around? Had he not leaned closer than he needed to when he whispered to her? Had he not looked deeply into her eyes and seen her for who she really was? And had he not come to trust her as he trusted no one else, sharing his deepest, darkest secrets?
Apparently not. As Farran collapsed down on the ground outside the open window, she put her hands over her ears. Still, the moans, the breathless pants and the almost unbearable savage grunts filtered through as Beck drove his engorged manhood into Malise again and again and again.
The pain was like a knife blade twisted in her chest while she mindlessly tore handfuls of grass from the dirt and the tears ran down her face.
Beck had not planned on having sex with Malise. It had just happened. Just like you didn’t plan on encountering a hunter. It just came at you out of nowhere. There was that rush of adrenaline. You reacted without thought. You did what you had to do. And then it was over.
He didn’t regret it. He didn’t know if he was even capable of that emotion any more. Malise was willing, more than willing. For some extra food, of course. He couldn’t see a damned reason why he shouldn’t take advantage of that. They both got what they wanted. There were few pleasures in this world. Why would he turn his back on the ones that did come his way? He was still a man, wasn’t he? With a man’s needs?
As Beck staggered along the wide main street, deserted now with the fall of darkness, he knew he’d had too much to drink. But hell, what difference did it make? Nothing wrong with forgetting all his worries for a while. Sure it was just a temporary distraction, but temporary was good enough these days.
As he stalked through the shadows, he thought about Matthew’s moment of truth. He re-lived the look of horror on Matthew’s face when he had seen the blood and the ghoulish interior of the house. It had even shaken him the first time he’d seen it. It had answered some questions, while it left others unanswered. But it was enough. Enough to give him an edge. It was information he might be able to use when the time was right.
Beck sank down on a bench at the end of the park and sprawled his long legs out before him. He needed a moment, just a moment, to sober up a little. The whiskey was hitting him hard all of a sudden.
He threw his head far back and let out a long, groaning sigh. Then he tried to focus. Getting rid of Matthew had been easier than he had thought it would be. Farran had done her job well. He needed to find a way to thank her. Because he did not want more blood on his hands, he had not killed Matthew outright. Just like with Macayla, he had banished him to the wilderness outside the camp, to pay for his sin of disobedience. And left him helpless. What happened after that really was not his doing.
So he did not realize that the greatest battle was inside himself. That it always had been. He didn’t know that his final surrender came with the justification of all his dark deeds. Or that his outward rage sprang from the ultimate internal struggle that festered inside himself at all times like a great churning caldron.
He shook his head to clear it as he looked down at the ground between his boots. Surprisingly, a rare moment of clarity did come, like a patch of blue sky on a very cloudy, very stormy day. He knew, deep inside him, that it had always been a question of good versus evil. From the very beginning. The mantle of authority that had become such a burden to him had become the final nail. It could have guided him and led him in a completely different direction, but the one he chose sealed his fate. For when the pressures of the outside world caused his inner turmoil to become too great, he was able to spin his self-contempt outward, like a far-flung nebulous so that it resided elsewhere. So that he had victims to carry it all. He had come to the point where he needed victims to carry it all.
Unfortunately, he never realized that it just became a multiplying of his sins. There was a great hollow deep inside him as there is in all men who focus their energies in the wrong direction. Beck, like all lost men, spent a good deal of his time desperately trying to fill that hollow with imitations, no matter what the cost to his soul.
Still dazed and numbed by what she had seen earlier, Farran sat alone on the park bench. Her clothes were damp from the heavy dew. They clung to her chilled body making her shudder spasmodically. She drew her knees up close to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She wanted to feel the cold. It was as if she wanted to feel that more than the pain throbbing like a living entity deep inside her. The pain left her, for a time, terribly open and vulnerable, prey to a terrible sickness of soul that seemed like it would swallow her whole.
She could still see Beck on top of Malise, both of them naked, both of them moving together in a desperate frenzy of orgasmic ecstasy. Beck’s animalistic sexual sounds and his vulgar encouragements still rang in her ears.
But during the past two hours, something strange had happened. She had found that her feelings were evolving. She was surprised to find that she had abandoned, apparently, all previous concepts of shame. And pride as well. She still lusted after Beck, and she still wanted him. Maybe even moreso now. Especially since the sights and the sounds of his savage lovemaking were so freshly and indelibly imprinted in her mind. Her fantasy had crashed and burned. But if Beck was willing, she had decided, by himself or even with Malise, she could still gather up something from the ashes.
She already knew what betrayal was. An
d disappointment. She had lived with those things every day of her old life. Her ex-husband had sought other women out, too. But there must have been a reason he had stayed married to her. It must have been because she had something that those other women didn’t have. Even if Kent wouldn’t admit it.
She had no delusions. This situation wasn’t fair. Not to her. Malise had Mader and Beck. While she had nobody. She had come here with Malise. Malise might have had some loyalty because of that. She told herself that Malise must have been the aggressor, that she had thrown herself at Beck. Just like she had always done with every other male. Farran had convinced herself that Beck had reacted as any virile male would react in such a situation.
At the same time, Farran fully acknowledged that she, herself, had always been too timid when it came to her sexuality. Other women were not so pathetically-lacking in sexual confidence. Malise certainly wasn’t. But Farran could change all that.
She looked down at her worn-out, mannish shirt and ran her fingers absently down the row of small plastic buttons. She slowly smoothed out her long skirt which was suitable for church on Sunday mornings, but woefully lacking when it came to seductions. She touched her limp, mouse-brown hair and realized that she should have made an effort to emphasize her femininity, rather than try to hide it.
The world had changed and the old rules didn’t apply any more. She had to change, too.
She was thinking about Beck’s virility again, and she was sliding helplessly into another forbidden fantasy when he suddenly and unexpectedly appeared out of the darkness.
She knew right away that he had been drinking. In fact, he was holding a half-empty wine bottle in his hand.
He sat down beside her on the bench and sprawled his long length out before him. He was obviously a man at ease at the moment. A man deeply contented. And why wouldn’t he be? He’d just had sex a short time ago. Very satisfying sex from all that she’d seen and heard. And now she saw that he had whiskey flowing through his veins as well.
Deadrise (Book 4): Blood Reckoning Page 11