“You were watching me for a while, then?” I ask.
He tilts his head, admitting it. “A week or so.”
“Dad’s security isn’t as good as he thinks, I guess.”
He shakes his head. He seems shy. At a loss for words or something. This can’t be right, though, because Talon is fearless.
“That one guard of yours, he ran off the night before we took you.”
“Sgt. Morey? I know.”
“They told you?”
“I gave Erin some boots and things.” I bite my lip. “Probably didn’t do her any good. The two of them are on their own out there.”
He darts me a surprised look. “You helped them!”
“Of course I didn’t.” I smile without humor. “If I did that, Dad would take his belt to me. Let’s just say I cast off some clothes I didn’t want anymore, and she happened to fit into them.”
“That was really kind of you.”
I give a short laugh. “Yeah, well, Erin was pregnant. They got it in their heads that Bluefield was a bad place to have a baby. I couldn’t talk her out of it.”
He shakes his head at that. “You have it better there than anywhere I’ve heard of.”
“Sad but true. They think there’s this place called Tintagel where everybody’s safe, there’s electricity, and there’s a job for everyone.” I arch my brows and give him my yeah, right look.
His hand tightens around mine as we pass the first of the trees. We go another thirty feet or so, and my heart lifts just a little. I may have said it before, but it’ll never be enough. I love trees. I think in another life I must have been a druid. Or maybe I was a tree.
“Ilsa.” Talon’s voice is quiet. Solemn.
My heart jolts to life, and my breaths come shallow. I stop and turn to him. “I don’t know what to say. I’m scared.”
He scoops me up and carries me over the remains of that tree he felled and sets me down on the old rotten log. He jams his hands in his pockets and cocks his hip against a nearby tree.
“There’s some serious bad shit between us.”
“No kidding.” I bury my forehead in my hands.
“Last night…” He pauses, and finally I look up again. “I shouldn’t have touched you. Shit’s too complicated for that.”
I half-laugh. “At least I felt alive, for a while anyway.”
His face wrinkles in confusion. “You aren’t who I thought you were,” he admits.
“Look at me,” I say when he turns away. I wait until he complies. “Unless you all kill me, and I figure you will, I have no place to go except back to Bluefield Mountain. I was a prisoner there, Talon. A well-fed, warmly clothed, coddled prisoner, and I hated every living moment of my life. He controlled everything about me, Talon, everything. I can’t go back to that.”
He swears.
My face scrunches as I pull every string in me to keep the tears from falling. “I’d rather live in that disgusting trailer and eat thirty-year-old peanut butter than go back.”
“Just…don’t go back. There are other communities.”
I scoff. “Those places don’t let in new people, and when they find out who my dad is, they’ll do the same thing General Barry is doing now.”
He looks away, but not before I see the agreement in his eyes.
“If I go back there, I’m going to be exactly the girl you thought I was. I think if I go back, I’ll lose whatever’s left of my soul.”
“He’ll take care of you. He loves you, Ilsa. He’s your dad.”
He just didn’t get it. “Just because I’m his daughter doesn’t mean he goes easy on me. Last time I openly defied him, he whipped me until I passed out. If I even look like I’m talking to a guy, he has the guy killed. I’m never alone, and his spies report everything to him.”
His eyes blaze.
I swallow and look away. I really wish I’d see a squirrel, or a bird, or…anything. “Last night I didn’t have to be the general’s daughter. If I’m going to die… If I’m going to die, at least I had that.” More than anything, I’m sad about the death of all my hopes.
The sound of automatic weapon fire ends the conversation.
“Down! Get down!” Talon doesn’t wait. He drags me behind the log.
“What is it? What’s happening?” I try to peer over, but Talon just shoves me down again.
“Stay here.” Talon sidesteps toward the clearing in a half crouch.
Stay put? Is he kidding? I follow him to a copse of pine trees whose needles have long since fallen. Still, it’s the best cover there is. I get there just in time to see Idris bolt from cover to cover before making a dash for the tree line opposite us.
Talon gives me the evil eye, and I shake my head. “It could be Dad. I have a right to know.”
“You’re a hostage,” he grumbles. “You have no rights.”
Idris is gone. Three armed men follow him into the forest, but not before I spot the all-telling high-and-tight haircut my father insists his soldiers wear and the dark splotches on the backs of their necks where they’ve been tattooed.
“Dad,” I breathe. “He came.”
At the thought of my father, a rush of feeling I thought long dead gushes through me, and my throat closes up. Am I wrong about everything? Am I more to him than a public-relations tool?
Talon runs a hand down my back ever so lightly, but he doesn’t grab hold and he doesn’t try to stop me from screaming, either. I could run. I might get far enough for the soldiers to notice me, for them to take Talon out and rescue me.
Immediately the familiar trapped feeling returns, of being locked in a satin-lined box that I cannot escape. Despite how frightened and vulnerable I’ve been this past week, the desolation of my day-to-day life at home almost seems worse. That night at the steak dinner, I felt so dead inside. My gut twists.
The hand on my back warms me, even through all those layers of clothes. I can’t stop thinking of what’s passed between us. All that passion left me feeling freer, more alive than I’ve felt in years.
And the forest has no walls. So.
Decapitation if I stay.
Prisoner for life if I run.
I look up to find Talon staring not at the trailer but at me. His expression is tortured like he doesn’t know what to do. He sucks in his lips and grimaces. It’s almost as though he’s telling me, without words, that what happens next is up to me.
A pine bough tickles my neck, reminding me that I’m alive here, so very alive. I don’t want to be a puppet anymore. I don’t want to leave.
I touch his sleeve, and my eyes search his for answers. Right, like I’ll find them written there in print. I lick my lips.
“Will you kill me?” I ask in a low, desperate voice.
He shakes his head at me like he thinks it’s funny that I’d take him at his word. But I need to hear him say it.
“Swear it, Talon. You won’t kill me and you won’t let them hurt me, either.”
He seizes my hand in an iron grip and pulls me closer, so close that you couldn’t slide a piece of paper between us. “I won’t kill you. I want you to suffer every moment of every day for the rest of your life. I want you to remember what you did and have it eat you up inside, but I won’t kill you. You’re mine now. I told you that.” He says it in that flat deadpan voice, so I know it’s true.
His gray eyes go almost black, and a current of emotion flows, I swear, through us both. I can’t say it’s love, but it’s desperation, and need, and commitment. I can’t help feeling like he’s just made a vow.
I squeeze his hand back with both of mine.
“I don’t know why, but I believe you,” I whisper. I glance back at the trailer and shake my head. If I’m wrong about him, I’m dead.
I retreat a couple steps into the woods, and Talon’s eyes widen as though he can’t believe I’ve chosen him. There’s wonder there and something else, but it passes so quickly I can’t interpret it.
That’s when a spatter of machine-gun fire
rips into the trailer. My heart lurches as I realize whoever is firing doesn’t care who’s in there. Doesn’t care if they kill me, too.
Three figures circle around back and into my line of view. One kneels down by the shit pit and balances a rocket launcher on his shoulder. My lungs stop working. A black hole rips into my chest and eats my heart. Anguish deeper than anything I’ve ever felt crushes me as the truth becomes clear.
“Jesus.” Talon is tugging on my arm, and even he looks shocked. “Goddamn it, move!”
There is no going against that tone. The logic either. I let him guide me through our flight because right now, my mind is lost. Rational thought has been replaced by bottomless despair. As I stumble over a branch, a boom sounds behind us and a fireball rises up over the trees.
This is no rescue mission.
I so badly wanted to be wrong.
Branches and thorns drag my coat and snag my hair as Talon flies through the woods, half tearing my arm out as he lifts me along like I’m no more than a toddler. The scent of burning chemicals reaches us. We can’t have gone very far.
I trip. Talon catches me, and he sweeps me up fireman style.
“Don’t!”
He tosses me over his shoulder. Oh my God. My ass is like right there, and I’m not fat or anything, but I’m just going to slow him down this way.
“Talon—”
“Shut it. If they’re half as good as you say they are, they’ll do a sweep of the area. One set of footprints will tell them they’re only following one person. A big person, not you.”
That shuts me up. It even cheers me ever so slightly, if you call going from despair to panic a cheering. Feeling more than useless, I at least try to keep my head up and watch for pursuers. But it’s awkward, and soon the blood pooling in my head makes me feel like my brain will pop.
Talon’s stride is long and purposeful, and it’s not long before the fumes from the fire dissipate. For now, I surrender to his plans, whatever they may be. It’s not like I’m an expert at…well, anything. This leaves me plenty of time to think. To feel.
I’d actually thought for a few short minutes that Dad had come to rescue me. This makes me seven kinds of a fool. The betrayal stings, and right now there’s a crack in my chest.
Eventually Talon sets me down. “Think you can keep up?”
I nod, and we take off again.
“Do you think they know we’re out here?” I ask.
“By now, yes. They will have swept the area.”
Another rush of fear sends my muscles into a clench. My legs feel like they’re made of lead. I picture Dad when I was back in junior high, proudly clapping at my dance recitals. Bastard.
The frigid winter air singes my lungs, and I have no hat. My breath comes in wheezes, but I’m not about to let that slow me down. Then I catch the faint hum of a snowmobile engine.
“They’re following us?” In my mind, I’m pretty much begging him to say no.
“Hard to say,” he pants. “They could be after Idris.”
They could even be headed back to Bluefield Mountain. Like I said, I have no sense of direction at all. “I hope he makes it.”
“Idris?” The look he flings over his shoulder tells me he never expected that from me.
“He’s not like the others,” I tell him. “He’s still civilized.”
Talon grunts as he heaves me up an embankment. “Most folks take one look at the color of his skin and write him off.”
Things got pretty bad for a while, especially between races. Instead of banding together, lots of people took the emergency as a reason to fling hate. Idris’s skin is dark, but as for race I can’t tell. He could be a mix of races or his ancestors could come from some island in the Pacific. All I know is he is massive, he’s a good-looking guy, and most importantly, he’d shown me compassion.
By now we’re climbing steadily.
“You didn’t answer me,” I remind him. “Where are we going?”
“I have no bloody idea. Somewhere far from here, that’s all I can tell you.”
“Aren’t you afraid of gangs?” One of the things that kept people in Bluefield, aside from the food, heat, and shelter, was the protection they got from the gangs.
“You talk too much,” he gripes. “Right now I’m more afraid of your dad’s people.”
He has a point.
He indicates the mountain that looms ahead of us. “Up there, I think. For now anyway. I don’t think they’ll look for you there.”
The mountain looks like it’s just over the next hill, but I know the Appalachians. The thing could be ten miles away.
We pass plenty of trees. Dead ones. We’re far enough out that a stray wild animal might have survived this long, but probably not. It’s the last place anyone would expect us to go.
I notice that Talon won’t make eye contact. Not that I’m needy or anything, but it’s weird. I’m trying to trust him, but I keep remembering what he said early on. You owe me two lives. He can’t have given up on all that pent-up hatred already. He swore back there that he wouldn’t hurt me or kill me, but what if he changes his mind? I have no idea where we’re really going. For all I know, he’s headed for Dad’s place to deliver my head.
Not like it would do General Barry any good, when my own dad tried to kill me.
I hear the engines again, and this time they’re louder. My stomach tilts. “Can they travel through woods?”
Talon wrinkles his brow. “Depends on how wide the trails are, or if there are roads nearby that we don’t know about.”
He picks up the pace, and I’m pretty much running beside him. I don’t complain.
I’m silent for a while except for some wheezing.
“What if we head for one of the towns?” I ask finally. I’m getting pretty hungry.
His lip curls. “You don’t think they’ll look there first?”
“There’s no food up there,” I say, indicating the mountain. “All the animals are dead and so are the plants. And even if there’s a spare duck waddling around, you don’t have a weapon.”
“Look,” he says, and he must think this is important because he stops. “If you want to die, do things your way. Tell me now so I don’t waste any more time trying to rescue you.”
I suck in my breath, and a wash of fear passes through me as I picture him abandoning me. I’ve just had my first taste of hope in days. Maybe I could go along with him for a while and look for ways to escape. But if I do that, there are a hundred different ways I can die out here. Starving to death doesn’t appeal. Neither does falling over a cliff.
Something else to consider—every time something horrible comes up, Talon’s there. He’s the only constant I have in this whole mal-adventure, the only source of hope and life. Putting my trust in him is hard, but he might be my best bet on getting to my nineteenth birthday.
Talon has that code of his. He might have no problem shoving his dick down my throat even though he hates me, but he’s never lied. He may have cooked meth back in high school, but he always looked out for his sister. He may have kidnapped me, but he steadfastly protected me from the others. As long as Talon keeps to his code…
“I’m sorry. I’m just scared. You lead.”
His eyes soften for a moment, and then he takes my hand.
CHAPTER SIX
Talon is helping me climb up a rock face as ice crystals fall on us like pin-tipped confetti.
“Come on,” he says. “Put your foot on that outcropping and take my hand.”
I look at the outcropping. That’s way too far. I look down and swallow. It’s at least a hundred-foot drop if he lets go. I take his hand, take a leap of faith, and soon we’re at the top of the cliff face. It’s been hours, and I haven’t eaten anything but that sticky glob of oatmeal this morning. We’ve gone miles. And miles. Four? Twenty? The terrain is so rugged we could have come two miles for all I know.
“Listen.” Talon narrows his eyes.
For a moment I stop breathing. I str
ain, but I hear nothing. I frown at him.
He breathes deeply, and his shoulders relax. “No more snowmobiles.”
Relief floods through me. That and joy.
“Either they’re following on foot now, or we’ve lost them,” he adds, ruining the moment.
I haven’t seen a single man-made structure since we left the trailer. No roads and not so much as a hunter’s tree stand. I shiver and jam my sodden gloves into my pockets.
Soon the ice fall makes it impossible for us to climb any more rock faces, but when we reach an outcropping, Talon goes out to the edge.
“Do you see anything?” I ask.
He has his hand over his eyes like he’s shielding them from the sun. Yeah, right. But I’m slightly nearsighted, so I rely on him. We’re pretty high up, enough to see the valley, enough to see the far-off remains of the trailer fire. He shakes his head. “No, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
The ice has settled on top of the previously fallen snow, and our footsteps crunch a clear trail. Tracking us will be easy.
And it’s beginning to darken.
“Should we find someplace for the night? Or do we keep walking?”
He shrugs. “We’ll find something.”
My stomach growls. “You didn’t bring anything to eat, did you?”
He heaves a sigh. “Do I look like I’m carrying a pantry around?”
I recoil. “Sorry. I just thought you’d be a little more prepared.”
He shakes his head like he’s swearing up a storm somewhere in that brain. “Prepared for what, Miss Princess? Your six-course dinner?”
I’m scared, and I’m tired, and I’m tired of being scared. “Don’t you dare throw that in my face. I didn’t complain even once about the food at the trailer.”
He throws up his hands. “That was good food. Most people would’ve been happy to have it!”
“Why doesn’t your leader do something about that?”
“Because your father took all the resources!” He kicks a fallen branch and eyes a cluster of boulders.
The General's Daughter (Snow and Ash #1) Page 7