by Tisha Wilson
If it was his power as a balance that was pulling her toward him she could understand her overwhelming need to protect him, to be possessed by him, but on his side… He had risked his life for her time and again. Why? Sure she was beautiful but he was an attractive man who could probably have any woman he wanted. And he’d had more than one opportunity to leave her high and dry and get on with his life. Instead he had come back to protect her and he hadn’t had to. For his part and against all odds he seemed to truly care about her. He thought her to be some type of a hero.
She didn’t want that to go to her head. She didn’t want to be flattered by the way he thought of her. She didn’t want to feel special, but she did. Just the same way Thomas had made her feel special by picking her over all the other prettier and more popular girls at her friends party. He’d seen something in her that she hadn’t seen in herself. She closed her eyes and suddenly wished that she had a mirror to see her tattoo. It was time to get the ink refreshed so that it didn’t fade from her. She should not be allowed to have feelings like this, not ever again, not when her family was dead because of her.
Unbidden memories of that night saturated her thoughts and she allowed it, knowing that it was what she deserved. She should never ever be allowed to forget that night and the things it had set into motion. She was a monster and needed to remember it. It wasn’t fair that she was still alive. She should be the one who died, apparently her blood had been corrupted from the day she was born and she had always been meant to be here, to be this… animal.
The pawing at the entrance had stopped nearly an hour ago and her senses told her that it was morning. She hadn’t slept at all but with as much blood as she’d taken from him the day before, she wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t that tired. After the good sex and the big meal she could probably go two more days without any sleep at all. She felt a tingling warning run through her senses. She’d felt it all night with the creatures so near but they should be in hibernation by now.
Still… something. She stood straight up when something at the back of the cave moved. She crouched low as she watched it move. She felt her face change. It stepped out of the shadows with a leering grin and she realized how close it was to Jerry. She kept very still, even to the point of not breathing.
It watched her just as she watched it and without hesitation it made for Jerry. Jerry managed a yelp as it picked him up, tossed him over its shoulder and ran back into the shadows. Before Al could reach him three more creatures stepped out of the darkness. She shook her head.
“You’ve got the wrong one now, bebe. Let’s dance,” she said with a growl as her claws descended and. She leapt at them without another thought for herself. If they were to take Jerry away from her now she would be finished forever.
*
Jerry heard the sound that emerged from his throat. He was dreaming. He had to be dreaming. There was something in the cave with them. A creature. It had grabbed him up and was carrying him off, but he was so tired. He couldn’t seem to rouse himself from sleeping. This had to be a dream. He let his head loll and was well on his way back to dark sweet dreams when he heard a scream in the darkness.
He would have ignored it because he needed to sleep so badly. His nerve endings were still raw and his body was in so much pain. He was literally drained. How could he help anyone the way he was? The scream came again and this time he felt it in his bones, in his soul. Something entered him and gave him the strength to lift his head. It was Alicia. She was crying out in pain. He looked up to see the creatures huddled on one spot like a football pile.
When a mocha colored arm emerged from the heap and was being carried away Jerry felt rage erupt in the pit of his stomach. He cried out as he reared back, startling the creature momentarily. As he expected, however, his rage enraged the creature and it tossed him clear across the room. He landed near a wall and struggled to get up. He spied the satchel and made a dive for it.
Just as he grabbed a corner of it he was hauled into the air yet again. He was again being carried off somewhere but he dug inside the bag until his hand made contact with something. The bag was snatched away from him and he prayed that he had a weapon and not a can of stew. The green light was loosing strength and he had to focus hard to see what was in his hand. When he made out what it was his smile was wide. The creature stopped as if sensing his elation but he didn’t give the thing a chance to inspect what was in his hands.
He pulled the pin and tossed the grenade in the air. The white light burst through the room. There was screaming and burning flesh everywhere. He could only tell by the smell since he was now slightly blinded by the light. When the noise died down some he waited for the ringing to clear from his head. That’s when he heard it. There was a whimpering noise.
He thought for a minute that it might be one of the creatures that hadn’t burned completely but the distinct rasp to the sound… It was Alicia. He got to his hands and knees and felt his way through the ash and muck. His hand made contact with something wet and the whimpering turned into a cry of pain. Her body was covered with the wet.
He forced his eyes to work then wished he hadn’t. At least the blood was not red against the green light, but the gore that covered her… they had chewed her up pretty good. She was trembling and her teeth were clenched. The muscle in her face was visible because of the strip of flesh that had been torn from her face. Her arm was missing and her clothes were in tatters. There was so much blood, it was just hard to even look down at her. He forced himself to concentrate on her face. One of her eyelids was missing so it looked as if she had her eye really wide as she looked at him.
He cursed viscously. If he hadn’t just killed them all he would have killed them all again. “What can I do to help you?” he asked as his hands hovered above her. Touching her seemed to hurt her more.
She was trembling so hard that he didn’t hear the words that came out of her mouth. He leaned in closer to listen.
“Sew… it… back… on,” she said through chattering teeth.
“Sew what back on?” he asked.
“My arm… if… I heal… without it… I’ll… grow… a… new one. Takes… months.”
He knew that the shock had to show on his face because she nearly smiled. The smile looked macabre since the tissue was missing on the right side of her face. He looked around the cave by the faint green light. He saw a few lumps under the ash and sighed. He went to the nearest lump and found a rock. The next two were rocks as well. How many wolves had gotten in and how? He reached for the next pile thinking to find another hard cool rock beneath but there was something slimy and warm instead.
“That’s it,” she shouted and he heard the pain in her tone.
He hurried back to her, then inspected the limb in his hands, repressing the urge to loose last nights dinner all over the cave’s floor. Alicia was breathing hard and a tear rolled down her left cheek. It was darker than a tear so he thought it could possibly be blood.
“I hate to say it babe but I think that this arm is beyond repair,” he said looking at the mangled limb.
The meat had nearly been completely stripped from the bone. When he turned it over to inspect it further and the finger bones flopped around Al hissed and her back arched off the floor as if she were in excruciating pain. He held the arm more carefully as he tried to help her until he noticed something.
The boney fingers clenched into a fist as Al cried out in pain and he threw it down backing away. This made her cries even more strangled and unnatural. He couldn’t take this. He could take anything but this. He went around to the opposite arm from where the arm lay and scooted up beside her again. “Please Al. I don’t want to have to call Bateman again. That didn’t work out so well for us last time. Tell me what I can do to help you and I’ll do it.
“Get the first aid kit,” she said on the end of a high pitched scream.
He hurried to where he thought the satchel should be. He found it then went through it. When he found the tin c
ontaining her medical supplies he returned to her side. She took his arm with her good hand. He was surprised by how normal this hand seemed compared to the rest of her body. If he concentrated on this arm then he could almost see the beautiful strong vixen again.
“You have to sew it back on.” He felt the tremor run through her body as she tried to keep the pain out of her voice.
He forced himself into a calm detachment he didn’t feel. He moved around to the arm that lay where he’d left it. If there were such a thing as hebie jebies he was pretty sure he had them right now. He rummaged through the kit and then pulled out a big needle and surgical thread. He pulled out an alcohol swab and was going to rip it open when he heard her laugh. He looked over to her.
Her face wasn’t bleeding anymore and there was a thin sheen of skin over the eye that had been lidless just a moment ago. “What are you going to do with that alcohol swab?” she asked.
“I’m going to…” he stopped short as he looked at the torn flesh where her arm should be. “Good point,” he said as he put the swab back in the kit. There was no more putting it off. He picked up the arm and she sucked in a pained breath. He ignored her as he tried to see the best way to sew it back on.
“Just sew the best you can. As long as it’s not backwards it will heal,” she said between clenched teeth.
He pressed the arm to her side and stabbed the dangling flesh left on the limb. He pressed the needle up into the shoulder meat and then repeated the action. Alicia turned her head away and her breathing was labored. It had to hurt terribly.
“You feel this?” he asked.
She gave him an incredulous glare before looking away again.
“What I mean is… if someone ripped my arm off and I had to get it sewn back on without anesthesia I would have passed out long ago. Well, that plus, I don’t think I’d be able to move my arm if it was no longer attached to my body. I mean I’ve heard when they cut the heads off chickens they still get a good dance out of them but not if the chicken has already been chewed on by the neighborhood dogs, I mean their bones don’t just start moving around while their head is being held in the farmer’s hand, I mean not that I’ve ever-“
“You’re rambling,” she interrupted him.
He stopped mid-sentence and acknowledged for a moment the emotion that was running through him. “You’re right. It’s just that this is a lot to deal with. I wake up to find you being eaten alive and then I get to sew your moving arm back on. This is a very not funny version of a bad B rated scary movie. If someone told me that things like this actually happened… It’s just a lot.”
“I told you. You would have been better off if you’d never known any of this. I told you that I wasn’t human.”
He stopped his task and looked at her. She was still trembling but already he could see that she was healing.
“Maybe you’re not,” he said quietly.
He saw the hurt register in her face so he hurried to continue. “No human I know could go through the things you’ve gone through and still want to help other people. Maybe those angel wings on your back are more than a tattoo,” he said before he went back to sewing her.
He was at the armpit and it was more difficult now. He had to lift her arm and place it over his shoulder. He controlled his reaction when the arm helped him by holding on to his sleeve for support. She pulled his sleeve and made him look into her eyes. The eyelid had returned but there were still no eye lashes yet.
“Mere de Dieu! You’re saying that you think me an angel?”
“I’m saying that you’re not the hard ass that you think you are.”
She rolled her eyes and fell back again. “You’re right about that. I couldn’t protect you while you were asleep. I would be the worst angel ever, non?”
“No one is perfect but I think you do alright. You have protected plenty of innocent lives. If people knew what you did you would be given a thousand metals. The fact that you don’t walk around flaunting what you do for other people makes you-”
“Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?” he asked.
“Make me out to be some kind of selfless hero. I have my reasons for doing what I do and they are not as selfless as you think. I have a debt to pay and I pay it every day that I wake up and live alone. So just… don’t. D’accord?”
He finally came back to the front of the arm and over lapped his stitches. It was ugly. He would never be a doctor, that much was certain. The arm released him and fell to her side.
“You have to get out of here,” she said as she lay there looking so weak and vulnerable. Some protective instinct rose up within him and he wanted to kick the shit out of something for this.
“We have to get out of here,” he corrected her as he looked around. He went to the cave entrance. There was no visible light but he could nearly hear the sounds coming from outside. Alicia would be able to move a few boulders and get them out but she was running low on energy right now without a doubt.
He turned back to the interior of the cave. “The wolves,” he said out loud.
Alicia sat up instantly as if she was ready to battle again. He closed his eye as he saw the gory mess that was her back. She would be so mad about her tattoo, but he wouldn’t mention that now. “Where?” she asked.
“No. I mean they got in here some how. If they got in, then there has to be a way out.”
She grabbed his arm just as he was about to pass her. “Leave me here and get yourself out, cherie. I’ll heal. Take my cell phone, get to Bateman. Tell him what the twins said about you. Maybe he’ll help you.”
After she finished her mandate, she fell hard, her eyes sliding closed. He hurried to her side and checked her. He was relieved to see that she was only sleeping. She was probably just healing herself. He shook his head wishing that she could just trust him. He wasn’t going to abandon her. She was pretty well stuck with him. He didn’t trust anyone but her to see him through this and he wouldn’t leave her vulnerable for another attack. He armed himself and then a thought came to him.
When he was a boy his father had taken him camping. They had found a cave like this and his father had told him that if he got turned around in a cave, a small fire could show him the way out. He found some kindling that Al had set up near the fresh water. He struck a match and got a fire going. The cavern filled quickly with smoke but then he saw it escaping somewhere in the back.
He picked up the glow stick and headed out after the smoke. “I pray this day will end better than the last,” he mumbled. His hopes for that were very bleak seeing what a great start they were off to already.
Chapter Ten
Jerry emerged from the dark smoky tunnel with a gasp. He drug in lung-fulls of clean air as he coughed out the bad. Maybe the fire thing wasn’t the best idea. He had to learn more survival skills than he had. After a while he looked around the area. The entrance the wolves had dug was nearly directly in the side of the mountain. As he looked back at it he realized that it was fairly hidden by the undergrowth. The wolves had to have crawled all over this mountain to find this one little passageway into the cave.
He looked up at the sky. It was early in the morning. He listened for any sound. He didn’t hear any cars to indicate a highway was near. Which way had they left the bike? He’d been so tired he hadn’t been paying any attention at all. He was still tired truth be told, but not nearly as bone weary as he had been. He wasn’t even sure how he’d kept himself moving at all yesterday. He looked up at the trees. They were thicker off to the left than they were to the right.
He had a better chance of finding a road where the trees were thinner. He did recall coming uphill last night and for some reason he thought they’d ridden the bike at the crease of the mountain. He started out in that direction and snapped small branches as he went to better recall where the hole was to get back inside the mountain cave.
He had been walking so long that he thought it might be better for him to head back for Alicia. Suddenly he b
urst from the trees and on to a paved road. He blinked a few times as he tried to absorb the fact that luck had finally been on his side. There were no center lines on this road and it was too narrow to be a highway, but a road meant that there were people nearby. He looked to the left and then to the right.
He turned and pulled a few branches loose and left them in an x at the side of the road. He turned to the right and started to walk. He’d been walking for about ten minutes when he came upon one of the biggest houses he’d ever seen. He wasn’t sure what he would say to these people but he knew that he needed help.
He was working on a story about how he and his girlfriend had gone camping in the woods. He would say that they had been trapped by a cave in and that he needed help getting her out. He decided it sounded as good as any lie as he neared the front door. He cursed and discarded the useless thoughts the closer he got to the house. As it turned out he wouldn’t need any lie. The white front door of the beige colored house was lying in a heap of rubble on the floor. He pulled out the gun he had tucked in the waist band at the back of his jeans and made his way inside. The house was a majestic structure complete with a foyer and grand staircase that led up to a right and left hall way.
Something stirred beneath his feet and he took aim at the white marble floor. Whatever the sound was, it was coming from the basement. He looked around the foyer at the smashed tables and pots. There was a picture in a silver frame lying face up. He picked it up and shook out the broken glass. Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, with what appeared to be their mother and father, stared up at him with smiling happy faces. It looked like the type of picture that the rich made Christmas cards out of to send to their relatives around the holidays.