by Eden Bradley
“I’ll tell you everything. Just meet me at the hospital.”
He snapped his phone shut and followed the EMTs back up the beach, along the steep path that wound up the cliffs.
“She needs the helicopter,” he muttered to himself, knowing there was no way a helicopter could have landed on the tiny strip of sand down there. Probably wouldn’t make a difference, anyway. The girl would likely die before they reached the hospital.
Pain cut into him like a knife. Why did it matter, anyway? He didn’t know this girl. But he couldn’t get her face out of his mind. Beautiful. Angelic…
He kept one eye on the girl as she was loaded into the ambulance, the other on the sheriff pulling up and jumping out of his car.
Tim Bullock’s brown hair stuck up in clumps, as though he’d been pulled out of bed. He probably had. “Declan, you the one who found her?”
Declan nodded. “But I didn’t exactly find her. More like she found me.”
“You can tell me more down on the beach. Backup should be here soon.”
“Tim, I’m going to the hospital.”
“We have an investigation to deal with. You’re our only witness.”
Declan set his jaw. “I can tell you I was walking on the beach and she landed on the sand, like a goddamn catapult had launched her off the cliffs. I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t hear anything. You’re welcome to ask me more questions after we get her to the hospital, but I’m going.”
“They’ll take care of her, Declan. What the hell is wrong with you?”
What the hell was wrong with him?
“I’ll see you at the hospital, Tim.”
He yanked open the door of his truck and whistled to Liam. The dog jumped in, and he swung his long legs in after him.
The sheriff rubbed his eyes with one hand. “Shit. Okay. Only because it’s you, Dec.”
Declan hit the gas and took off after the ambulance as it pulled out onto the coast highway, cursing all the way to the hospital.
And somewhere behind the curses was a small prayer that she’d make it.
The scenery went by in a blur of grays and greens and the beginnings of a blue sky. The radio was tuned to the local country station, and an old Patsy Cline song came on. He flipped the sound off roughly.
“Don’t need to hear that on a day like today,” he grumbled to Liam.
The day was bad enough, and would probably get worse. He didn’t need a song to remind him of his mother on top of everything else.
Don’t think. Just drive. Just get there.
He pulled into the emergency parking lot at the hospital as they were unloading the stretcher into the E.R. bay. Rolling the windows down for Liam, Declan jumped out and followed the stretcher and the team of EMTs in, but once inside the E.R. doctor, Stephen Kane, a man he’d known since high school, stopped him.
“We need some room to work, Declan.”
“I found her, Stephen. I want to make sure she’s okay.”
“I’ll let you know.” He pushed Declan back with a gentle hand on his shoulder.
Declan glared at him. Stephen pushed harder. He let his muscles relax, knowing he wasn’t going to be of any help in there. “Okay. Okay. Take good care of her.”
He watched as the doctors and nurses worked on the girl in a frenzy. Everything was moving so fast, he couldn’t tell what was happening. Orders were shouted, equipment hooked up. He was acutely aware of the smell of disinfectant, the metallic scent of blood he hadn’t been able to get out of his nostrils since she’d fallen at his feet on the beach. His ears still echoed with that hard thump as her body had hit the damp sand. So damn hard her blood had splashed the legs of his jeans, which he hadn’t noticed until now. He dropped his head, rubbing the back of his neck.
Jesus.
His head buzzed, went a little empty. He dug his fingers into his hair.
A hand on his arm steadied him, and he was surprised to see it was his father.
“Dad.”
Oran Byrne was shorter than his son, but still a commanding figure. His features were rugged, a little worn with age. His hair was all gray now, but still thick. He wore it a little too long. His mother would have hated that.
Small pang at the thought of his mother, dead now from cancer for more than ten years. Too many reminders of her today.
“What’s going on, Dec?”
“I was walking, like I do every morning. Someone threw this girl off the cliffs.”
“Threw her off? Jesus. And she’s alive?”
“Barely. Something weird going on, though—”
“Throwing someone off a cliff isn’t exactly typical, Dec.”
“Yeah. But look at her.”
He gestured with his chin. Even from where they stood, with the medical team buzzing around her, they could clearly see the strange marks all over her body.
“What the hell is all that?” his father mumbled.
Christ, there was blood everywhere. Even worse than it’d been on the beach, the red so stark against the white linoleum, the doctors’ scrubs, their latex gloves. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand the damn scent of it.
Blood everywhere, like a crimson flood flowing out of her neck. That bastard grinning at him victoriously before the band of them took off with Abby’s purse. The feel of her body heavy in his arms. The warmth of her blood beneath his hand as he pressed over the wound. Fucking impossible to stop it, her neck sliced all the way across. Her brown eyes staring at him helplessly. She was still in there, damn it!
Don’t go…
Too damn late. Too late before it even happened.
“Dec? You okay?”
His father’s voice cut through the images playing in his mind like a movie he couldn’t shut off. He was sweating. Shaking. Fucking awful that his old man had seen him like this.
He shrugged his father’s hand from his arm. “Yeah, what? I’m fine. Fine.”
He took a few steps away from his dad, whose hands were raised, palms up, as if warding off his son’s anger. He didn’t blame him. But he had to fucking distance himself. Catch his breath.
He looked back at the young woman on the table. Her long, blond hair hung over the edge, nearly touching the floor. He wished she wasn’t going to die. Wished he could know her, that he could have saved her. Moving to the window, he touched the glass. He knew from experience that wishing wasn’t enough. But he was doing it anyway.
Who was this girl? He would probably never know.
Another flurry of activity as her heart monitor flatlined. His own heart hammered in his chest, slamming into his lungs. He could barely breathe. He couldn’t look away, even though he knew he was watching her die.
Too damn late. Too late before it even happened. Again.
* * *
DECLAN RUBBED AT HIS grainy eyes. He couldn’t believe she’d survived the night, but somehow, she had. A glance at his watch told him it was
7:00 a.m. The hospital ward was just beginning to stir, a metal cart with breakfast trays rolling down the halls, leaving a trail of starchy scent in its wake.
They’d taken her from the E.R. and admitted her late last night. Not even into ICU. How could she have lived through a fall like that?
He was stiff from having spent the night in the hard, blue plastic chair in the sterile hallway. But he was not going to leave her. His father had tried to talk him into going home and getting some rest, and they’d had some words. No surprise there.
The local cops had shown up, as promised, some baby-faced kid and his even younger sidekick, neither of them guys he knew. He’d gone over what had happened a dozen times before they realized he really didn’t have any more to tell aside from the sparse details they’d already written down in their notebooks. They’d finally left with a promise to come back when the woman woke up.
If.
Declan ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. He needed a shave. A shower to wash the stink of hospital from his skin. Desperately needed a cup of coffee. But h
e wasn’t going anywhere until he talked to someone about her.
It was another hour before the doctor showed up. He was glad to see it was someone he knew.
Declan stood, took a moment to clench his jaw against a wave of exhaustion-induced dizziness. “Stephen. How is she?”
“She’s doing well, considering.”
“Considering what, exactly? I want to know everything. No one would tell me yesterday. And the people on the night shift were even more closemouthed.”
“We were too busy working on her yesterday. And last night there still wasn’t much to tell.”
“I know.” He shrugged impatiently. “So, tell me now.”
“Her right leg was broken pretty badly, but I think you knew that. Surgery is scheduled for later today. Her right shoulder was dislocated, but that was easy to fix. The wrist is sprained. Plenty of cuts and bruises. Several small facial wounds and a severe concussion, which is what I’m most concerned about. But the strangest injuries are these two cuts along her shoulder blades, about six inches long. And they were put there on purpose, cut clean, right along the edge of the scapula.”
“That’s where all the blood was coming from?” Declan asked.
Stephen nodded. “Most of it. Some from the head wound. But those weird incisions… Any deeper and the tendons would have been cut through.”
“Jesus. What else?”
“Tox screen shows a significant amount of drugs in her system. Hallucinogens. Peyote, belladonna, something else we haven’t identified yet. And plenty of tranquilizers, too. She should be dead just from that, frankly.”
Declan ran a hand through his hair. Amazing that the girl had lived. “What kind of damage do you expect when she wakes up?”
“If she wakes up. It’s still too early to say. We’ll run some scans today before the leg surgery. There’s definitely brain activity, but will she come out of this whole, with her mind intact? We just don’t know. I’d sure like to know what the hell happened to her, though.” The doctor paused, massaged the back of his neck for a moment. “I know we’re a small town, but this is the strangest damn case I’ve ever seen. Oh, and by the way, those pentagrams on her hands? When we washed her off, we found that beneath the paint they’ve been tattooed there in red ink. And from what I can see, the tattoos have been there for years.”
Declan’s mind was working at a hundred miles an hour suddenly. “Do you think there’s any chance she did this to herself?”
“I don’t know what to think. Maybe she’s one of those people who are into weird stuff. Witchcraft. But she couldn’t possibly have put those cuts on her own back. We may never know if she doesn’t wake up.”
Declan nodded, but his mind was already elsewhere. He had to get ahold of the sheriff, find out if he’d discovered anything new looking around the beach and the cliffs. Find out if there’d been any kidnappings in the area lately. See if there were any APBs out that matched the girl’s description. He’d talked to Tim last night before those children in state police uniforms had shown up, told him everything he’d seen, brainstormed with him, but they’d come up with nothing. He knew Tim would be doing everything he could, but Declan wanted to look into this himself. Do it right. This case would be too much for a small-town sheriff’s office to handle. They didn’t have the staff, the funding, to investigate this kind of case. And as much as he hated to admit it, he knew his father could help. Oran had connections he didn’t.
“I have to go order some pre-op tests, Dec,” Stephen said, giving him a pat on the shoulder. Declan flinched. He didn’t like people touching him. Couldn’t stand it.
“Yeah, sure. Thanks for the information.” He drifted back across the hall to watch her through the open door to her room. He couldn’t bring himself to go inside.
Too close.
No, better to watch from a distance. Better not to allow himself to get too near her, where his body could respond to her again. She really had the most beautiful face he’d ever seen. And he couldn’t get the image of her bare breasts, ripe and pale in the morning light, out of his mind.
Sick bastard.
Yes. But any man would have to be crazy not to respond to a woman who looked like she did. Innocent and so damn lovely it almost hurt to look at her. When had he ever used the word lovely? But it fit. She really was some ethereal creature, like a fallen angel tumbled from the sky.
Her monitors gave a beep and he saw that her pulse and respiration had sped up. He stepped into the room, found himself at her bedside before he had a chance to think about it. He knew the nurses would come if she were in any danger. Maybe the change in her heart rate meant she’d wake up soon?
She was even prettier up close. Skin like pale satin. Flawless. He wanted to touch her. Wanted to reach out and stroke her cheek with his fingertips again. He remembered exactly what it felt like, but he forced his hands to stay still at his sides.
Don’t do it.
His gaze fell to her hand, turned palm-up on the blue hospital blanket, and he saw the red pentagram tattoo. It almost hurt to look at it. To see the tattoo. The bandaged wrist. The cuts and bruises. To imagine the things that must have been done to her. How she’d been hurt in the fall.
Christ, this girl was really getting to him.
Finally, it was too much. He lifted his hand, touched the tip of one finger to her face. Warmth washed over him, his groin tightened.
God, like some kind of pervert!
One of her monitors beeped and he yanked his hand back. He looked into her face, watched as her eyes fluttered, then opened. Unbelievable. Eyes that were all cloudless blue summer skies. That innocent. That clear and sweet. She was looking right at him. His heart lurched.
She moved her lips, but for a long moment nothing came out. Lips lush and cherry-pink, despite her condition. Finally she whispered, “Save me.”
His heart hammered. Broke wide-open. He leaned in, looking into her eyes, willing her to see him, hear him. “Anything. Anything for you.”
He meant it. And that scared the hell out of him. This girl scared the hell out of him. Because she was the first person in six years he’d felt anything for.
“Who are you?” he asked her, his voice low, almost as though he were asking himself. But her eyes had closed again. He wasn’t even certain she’d really spoken to him, or if he’d imagined it, a combination of exhaustion and shock. He was surprised he was even still capable of being shocked. He sure as hell wasn’t capable of feeling much else anymore, other than resentment, anger.
But looking down at the pale figure with the beautiful face, he knew that was a lie. It was more than anger surging through his veins. Beneath the anger, the shock, was a deep need to protect this girl, this stranger. To avenge her.
He would find out who had done this to her. No matter what it took.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE COULD SEE CERBERUS’S HEAD, enormous and black as midnight. He was just out of reach, over the next dune of windswept sand. She followed him, running as fast as she could, so fast grains of sand kicked up onto the small of her back, the back of her thighs, stinging her bare skin. But he was faster.
Was he leading her to the Gates? Did this mean she wasn’t rejected, after all?
She’d been to the Gates before, or nearly there. She had seen them from a distance, anyway, black and shining against the smoky red sky that never seemed to end. But they were always just out of reach, just like their guardian.
He was running, faster and faster, and she was breathless, trying to keep up as he led her into a dark cove, the rocky peaks towering above her on either side. The sand narrowed to a small pathway, twisting and turning so that she couldn’t see what was ahead or behind her, other than the flash of black fur she followed after.
Her heart was burning, her legs pumping, her lungs on fire as she ran. And suddenly she knew she was lost, that he was gone. That she’d failed again.
Her chest ached with sorrow. With a purely physical pain she didn’t understand. She st
opped, turning around and around, but everywhere was rocks and sand and emptiness. Panic shook her, making her dizzy.
The sky was fading from red to gray, the rocks disappearing in the mist. Light shone through. She peered into the shadows. Someone was there.
Not Asmodeus. Not Cerberus.
He had a hard, kind face. Beautiful in its own way. Not the sharp perfection that was her demon lover. More…real. And she found her racing pulse calming.
There was something about his eyes…they were a pure, dazzling blue. And fierce with…what? She sensed no anger from him there, not toward her, at least. But he burned, this man.
Her mind was blurring, and she forced herself to stay with him, to focus. He reached out, and her pulse raced as he touched her face. The gentlest of touches, making her body warm all over.
She had never before been touched by a man. Had never seen one other than Asmodeus, and he wasn’t really a man at all.
Her body ached. It was the pure and lovely ache of desire beneath the wrenching pain that was building, until she could barely breathe through it.
He was fading again. She wanted to hang on to him. Needed to. This was what she’d chosen. But she felt too weak, too tired, to hold on. She couldn’t do it. Not alone.
She tried to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come out.
Save me.
She tried again, but her lips refused to move. She was going numb all over: her body, her mind. She felt an odd sinking sensation, as though she was being pulled into the very center of the earth.
She didn’t want to do it, but she called on the only one who was familiar to her.
“Asmodeus!”
“I am here.”
Relief flooded through her at the sound of his voice. Then his heat enveloped her and she saw the golden glow that often preceded him. Just a clear, gleaming light that seemed to come from his hair and his body, cut through only by the burning, bottomless black of his eyes. More beautiful and deadly than a snake.
“Asmodeus, where am I?”
“You are here, with me.” His voice was a deep, soothing echo, one she could never quite catch. But it wrapped around her like a full-body caress.