Deadrise (Book 4): Blood Reckoning

by Brandt, Siara

  Disappointment can make a woman desperate. It can make her abruptly reverse courses, so she threw caution to the winds. “Aren’t you going to share that?” she asked.

  For a moment, he looked surprised by her request. Then silently, he handed the bottle over to her.

  She drank down nearly half the bottle, lowered it and coughed a little. She gave the bottle back to an astonished Beck and watched while he tipped the bottle up to his own mouth and finished the rest of the wine.

  When she realized that her habitual stiff smile was still frozen in place, she tried to relax her facial muscles. She was not completely successful at first, but the wine didn’t take long to affect her.

  Still, for a moment she faltered. She hung her head as the pain washed over her anew. But she had lived with betrayal for so long that she had developed antidotes to it. Even if, sometimes, one of those remedies was the distracting pain from a body that was a mass of bruises.

  There were small things that were still occurring to her. Like the way that Beck would stare at Malise when he thought no one else was looking, like he could hardly keep his eyes off her. That made sense now.

  “I didn’t say it before,” Beck began, his tone low and intimate. “I want you to know that I’m grateful. For everything.”

  Her gaze came up slowly to meet his. Emotion rippled through her, so strong that it made her tremble.

  Gratitude. Was that what she was supposed to settle for? Was she supposed to be grateful for these pathetically small crumbs that he threw her way?

  No, she was going to demand more for herself. But she would have to be bold. She would have to throw caution to the winds.

  “It’s quiet out here,” he breathed as he rested his head back on the bench and closed his eyes, completely oblivious to the storm wreaking such havoc inside her.

  “We can change that,” she said. Her boldness both frightening and exciting her at the same time.

  She unbuttoned the top two buttons of her shirt. Beck didn’t notice. She undid the rest of the buttons and shrugged out of the misshapen shirt. Beck watched her as she stood up and took off the rest of her clothes until she was standing completely naked before him.

  She was thin, almost painfully thin. Her nipples were hard in the damp, nighttime chill, but her breasts were practically nonexistent.

  When Beck finally found his voice, he asked, “What are you doing?”

  She had shocked him. There wasn’t any doubt about that. He continued to stare at her as if he didn’t know what to say or do. Because he made no move towards her, she began to crumble under the massive weight of her insecurity.

  “Aren’t you- interested?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “Truthfully? I couldn’t get it up if I tried.”

  That was true. He’d consumed too much alcohol and he needed some time after two exhausting rounds with Malise.

  Farran stared down at him with owlish eyes.

  As his gaze slid over her body, she heard, “You’re serious about this?”

  She gave a stiff, jerky nod.

  Beck had been taken completely by surprise. He scratched his head. Could he accommodate her? His ego, certainly, went up a few notches. But she was going to have to help him out here.

  “Maybe dance for me,” he said. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  Her arms moved. But the effort was more like a bird trying to make its way out of a nest for the first time. Beck twirled his finger and she obeyed. She spun around and displayed her backside to him. She was graceless. She was awkward. She was self-conscious. What she wasn’t, was sexy. No matter how much she wiggled, contorted and posed.

  In Farran’s mind, however, was only the thought that she was being bold and provocative. The she was being the seductress she had always secretly dreamed of being. She presented herself in every way she could think of, throwing away all the inhibitions that had ever held her back. The vision of Beck naked and excited, was fresh in her mind. She wanted to see him that way for her. No man could resist a willing, naked woman. No man.

  Farran stopped suddenly. Beck had thrown his head back and he was laughing. Laughing.

  “I’m sorry,” he almost choked, “But it’s a good thing you didn’t have your heart set on being a dancer in your old life.”

  Another deep, prolonged laugh slid past his throat. She had not been exciting him, she realized. She had been amusing him. She was a joke. Worse than that, she saw that he felt no measure of remorse for humiliating her. He didn’t even realize that she had melted into a puddle of humiliation at his feet.

  The moonlight was behind him, and from where she stood it cast his face into shadow. But he had noticed her puckered nipples and the goose bumps.

  She heard, “You should probably put your clothes back on.”

  His words, spoken so nonchalantly, so calmly, were like ice water thrown over her. Immediately after, a deep fire of emotion seethed through her veins. The fire of mortification. The shame she had discarded not so long ago came back with a vengeance. It was multiplied a hundred times over. Even Kent with all his beatings had never hurt her so deeply, had never made her feel so exposed. So belittled. So worthless. So undesirable.

  She stood before him like a marionette that has suddenly gone limp, watching him with thoughts he could only guess at. He must have realized his mistake eventually, even through his alcohol haze. He tried to apologize to her. But it came too late and it was woefully lacking.

  She barely heard his words. She was too far gone for that. She put her clothes back on, concentrating only on that as she clung pitifully to the almost non-existent shreds of her dignity.

  “Look. I’m not saying that we couldn’t- ” He searched for the right word. “Screw once in a while. But right now I’m- ”

  “Not in the mood?” she supplied though her words rang hollow.

  “Yeah. That.” But he looked at her strangely as if he was trying to figure her mood out.

  “Maybe another night?” he suggested.

  She didn’t reply. One last mental image of Beck with Malise had her stomach clenching all over again until she thought she was going to be sick. But she reached deep inside and found it in her to smile. It was a surface smile, however. It went no further than her lips. But Beck didn’t seem to be aware of that. As long as she was back to being the dependable Farran that he knew, nothing else mattered.

  Chapter 11

  Parisa had been cut off by hunters, so she had gone farther than she had intended to go. And now? Now she was alone in the darkness after searching both locations and there still was no sign of Matthew. She came to a sudden halt in a clearing, stopping to listen as she stared at the house before her. She would check inside and then she would head back. Maybe tomorrow-

  The attack came suddenly and without warning. The hunter was right behind her but she didn’t hear the wheezing rasp of rattling breath until it was too late. She spun around as the hunter shuffled straight for her with its loose-jointed gait and reached for her with vicious snarls and flailing arms. Clawing wildly at the loose material of her shirt, the hunter managed to snag the strap that hung down between her breasts. He tore at the sagging, worn leather and got the loose length of it caught between his rotted fingers.

  Almost panicking, Parisa sucked in her breath and instinctively tried to jerk away. But the hunter was caught fast and he went down with her to the ground. She had fallen onto a board when she hit the ground and pain shot through her as something sharp, possibly a nail, punctured the back of her arm. She couldn’t tell if it was a bad wound but it was definitely painful and she knew it was bleeding profusely. She felt the wetness of blood. Still, she was lucky. So far, she hadn’t been bitten. But the hunter was lying halfway on top of her, snarling and writhing savagely in its attempt to take a bite out of her.

  Everything seemed to be a blur as she fought the hunter. Yet everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. One minute she was trapped, but the next she managed to roll to he
r side and get away. It was a miraculous, unexpected escape.

  She scrambled to her feet. She was panting hard, half from fear, half from adrenaline. She felt wetness and saw that blood already dampened half the sleeve of her shirt. The hunter was flailing about as it eyed her, but it hadn’t been able to get back to its feet. Yet. She knew that wasn’t going to last long. With her pulse pounding like a freight train, Parisa ran. Straight for the house. By now, the hunter was on its feet again, and headed right for her.

  Parisa reached for the door handle. She turned it in a blind panic and pulled, but the door was stuck. She pulled again, with all her might this time. Nothing. She realized her mistake and pushed. When the door swung open, the unexpected action threw her forward and she crashed headlong over the threshold.

  As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, what she saw held her there motionless. The sickening, horrific scene before her seemed to paralyze all her muscles. She had found Matthew.

  Overnight, Lathan had found himself a roommate in the barn loft. A very curious cat that seemed to be starving both for food and for attention. After pestering him all night, the cat was finally curled up in a ball, sleeping soundly against his belly.

  “I was always a dog person,” Lathan said gruffly as he sat up. But when the cat skittered away from him, he reached for it, picked it up and cradled it in his arms, petting it soothingly.

  “There anything besides mice to eat around here?” he asked as he looked down at the contentedly-purring cat.

  He snorted under his breath. “You probably wouldn’t tell me even if you did know.”

  When he was finally fully awake, he looked over the edge of the loft floor. No hunters. If he was lucky there was a farmhouse somewhere nearby. Chances were that any food would have already been cleaned out by now, but you never knew.

  Food was uppermost in his mind. He needed to find some protein and fast. Water was even more critical. After last night’s rain, that should be do-able. The tricky part was to find clean water. The last thing he needed was to make himself sick by drinking contaminated water and weakening himself even further.

  The cat followed him down from the loft and sat looking up at him as he yawned and stretched his arms over his head.

  Meow.

  “I don’t speak cat.” Lathan scowled down at the cat and added, “You’re wasting your time. I don’t feel sorry for you. And you can’t go with me. He stomped one boot at the cat to try and shoo it away. “I mean it.”

  The cat hid behind a post and Lathan immediately felt remorseful which irritated him to no end.

  “Getting soft over a cat,” he muttered under his breath. “Hell. Don’t you know how dangerous it is out there?”

  Two hours later, he was making his way across a muddy field with the cat sitting on his shoulder. A cat could be a liability. He knew that. The smart thing would be to get rid of it. For both their sakes. But, damn. It had come with him this far. How would it survive on its own now that it was so far away from the barn? He wondered if hunters ate cats. If they could catch them, they probably would, he decided. Not that the scrawny cat would make much of a meal.

  “Look,” he said, pointing with his chin and mindlessly stroking the cat as he squinted into the distance. “A farmhouse.”

  Hard to know what he would find there. Hunters had been thick everywhere. He’d managed to avoid most of them, but he didn’t want to spend another night in the dark in the open. Things always got dicey after nightfall. He started towards the farmhouse and stopped when someone came out of the front door.

  A man. Not a hunter.

  The cat meowed.

  “Shush. Let’s be smart about this. That means you be quiet and I’ll do the talking.”

  There was every chance of a confrontation. And maybe there were other people inside so that he would be outnumbered. Not a good thing. Especially with that cat making itself at home on his shoulder. It could make getting to his weapons difficult if he needed to do it in a hurry. But there was no turning back now. Hunger drove him. Besides, the man had just turned his face to look in his direction.

  The man had stopped what he was doing and he was watching intently as Lathan approached. The man didn’t look hostile, but you never could tell.

  “Hope he can tell that I’m not a hunter,” Lathan muttered to himself, knowing how scruffy he looked. That mistake didn’t always end well.

  The front door opened and a woman stepped out onto the porch. Lathan stopped dead in his tracks. The cat teetered as Lathan’s breath left him in a rush.

  After Parisa slammed the door behind her, she stared at the man tied to the chair. It was Matthew. His head was hanging so far forward that his chin was touching his chest. He wasn’t moving so she didn’t know if he was alive or dead.

  By the low glow of a lantern’s light, she stared at the other thing that was off to one side of the room. It was a woman’s head. But it was attached to someone else’s body. A very pale male body that was completely, starkly naked and stretched out on a wooden, blood-stained table. She could see the black stitches encircling the woman’s neck where it was attached to the body. And further down, was the equally black mat of hair framing the male sexual organs. The woman’s eyes were open and she was looking at her, but through flesh hunter eyes. The mouth was opening and closing and Parisa heard the snap of teeth. But the body didn’t move at all. The hands, with the palms turned upward, lay limp at the man’s sides.

  Parisa stayed wary as she looked around the room and the doorways that opened to other rooms that were black voids. There were blankets draped over all the windows. There were also hospital-type beds covered by white sheets. Other bodies were lying on them. Or just body parts. There were beakers and test tubes, surgical instruments, and what looked like medical machines. And blood. There was a lot of blood everywhere. It was like some kind of sick Frankenstein laboratory.

  She had just started to go to Matthew, when the door suddenly burst open behind her. She whirled around, expecting to see the hunter who had been thumping against it in its efforts to get to her. But it wasn’t the hunter. Two men entered the room and both looked equally surprised to see her.

  “Well,” one of the men said as he looked Parisa over. “I wasn’t expecting this. But I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “Make sure he’s dead,” the man closest to Parisa ordered.

  Grabbing hold of Matthew’s hair, the other man pulled his head back sharply. It exposed Matthew’s throat below the dark beard stubble. Blocked by the other man, Parisa struggled to get to Matthew who still wasn’t moving. Then she watched in horror as the man drew a knife along Matthew’s throat, which brought forth a gush of blood as Matthew slumped forward again.

  The other man was watching Parisa closely. The light was fading fast which cast his coarse features into shadow, but she saw his mouth spread wide into a chilling smile. “Like I said, I wasn’t expecting this.” He began to unzip his pants. “But now that that’s taken care of, we can concentrate on getting acquainted. An extra body is always a bonus.”

  The man went on undressing. When his pants were gone, he stood before her, displaying the blatant evidence of his arousal. She backed away. “Hey, it’s your choice, honey,” he said. “You can make this easy. Or you can make it hard.”

  The other man snickered. “She’s going to get it hard one way or another.”

  “Clear off one of those beds.” The first man ordered with a jerk of his head. The second man immediately obeyed.

  Parisa knew she had to get away from these men. No matter what it took. She watched tensely as the first man picked up a whiskey bottle, tipped it to his mouth and took several long swallows. Not once did he take his eyes off of her.

  “Yeah, we’re going to get to know each other real well,” he said as he lowered the bottle and began to unbutton his shirt.

  When the shirt was gone, Parisa backed up as the man advanced towards her. With her back against the wall, and with nowhere else to go,
she struck without warning. Reacting out of sheer desperation, she did some immediate damage with a well-placed knee. Then she swept the man’s leg out from beneath him with a determined kick, a self-defense maneuver that Lathan had taught her. She was glad now that he had made her practice so much. Of course, fighting against a fully-aroused, naked man was much, much different than practicing with Lathan. Of course, he wasn’t quite so aroused anymore.

  The man collapsed to the ground with a prolonged howl of rage and a string of vile curses. He called her every foul word she had ever heard, and then some. Terrified, and knowing that the man’s fury would eventually be directed at her, Parisa didn’t even stop to think. She grabbed a small stool, raised it with her arms and with all her terror behind it, swung it at the head of the other man who was now coming towards her her.

  She knew she hit him with one of the metal legs. She heard the ringing sound of the impact. He hadn’t been expecting it and he was immediately disoriented from the blow. He stumbled backwards, tripped, then went down hard, right on top of the other man who was still struggling to get to his feet.

  Taking what might be her only opportunity to escape, Parisa pulled the door open. She made no mistake this time. The door swung inward and banged back hard on its hinges. Just as soon as she stepped over the threshold, an iron hand snaked out, snagging her wrist and jerking her hard against a solid male chest.

  The moment that Addy stepped out onto the porch, she froze. She had to stare hard to convince herself that what she was seeing was real. There was Nathan walking across the frost-coated field with a cat on his shoulder.

  When he stepped up onto the porch, she finally found her voice. It came out of her in a rush. “I didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”

  “You think I’d die before seeing you again?” He set the cat down on the porch. His hand immediately traced her cheek lightly, lovingly, carefully avoiding a deep cut he saw there. “What happened to you?”