She didn’t. He would only spout more nonsense.
“Were you going to write a note to your lover?”
“I don’t have a lover.”
“Oh, but you do. You told me about him, remember?” His rancid breath scorched her face as he brought his lips dangerously close to hers. “Don’t think I forgot about our little chat on the ferry. How could I, when your betrayal broke my heart.” He caressed the cheek he slapped, though his voice conveyed extreme malice.
She turned her face away. “You don’t have a heart.”
“He can’t have you, my darling. No one can. You’re mine, always have been, always will be. This time, I’m not letting you go.”
There it was again.
She met his intense gaze with one of her own. “What do you mean this time? I never met you before Sunday, you miserable asshole.”
“Ah, but you did.” His lips stretched into a practiced grin. “In fact, I once had you on a bench, where you begged me to take you.”
She shuddered, admitting to herself that in that moment, with his cold eyes slits of pure evil, he seemed familiar.
Keep it together, Ann.
He pinched her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Where’s the pen?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He dropped her chin, then rubbed his palms together, seemingly unaware of his burn. “By jabbers, I do love a good search.” Without warning, he slid his hands up her shirt to palm her breasts.
She thrashed against the band of tape holding her to the chair. “No!” she squealed. “Let me alone!”
“It’s not here.” He tugged on her nipples.
“Please . . .” She began to whimper, remembering the pleasure of another man’s touch.
William.
Nigel’s hands glided down to her waist. “Is it here?” His fingers skimmed toward her thighs with deliberate slowness. “No? Well, let’s see, then . . .”
She trembled, knowing where he would touch next.
Please, God, don’t let him get hard.
“I know where it is.” He stabbed a hand between her thighs, then cupped her mound.
She twisted against her restraints, desperate to tear the tape, break the chair, break her arms, legs, anything . . .
He laughed at her attempts to escape him. Only her panties prevented him from entering her as he gouged a finger against her sex. “It’s in there, isn’t it?” He scratched her skin along the lace hem of her tiny garment. “I’m going to take my time looking in there.”
The rush of blood muted all other sounds but her gasps. Tiny pins pierced her cheeks and nose.
He flashed his knife.
“P-Please, d-don’t hurt me.” She glanced at his crotch and saw no bulge.
He sliced through the tape around her middle, then stood to lift her off the chair. With her wrists and ankles still bound, he tossed her onto the bed so hard she bounced.
After returning his weapon to its sheath, he leered down at her, his tongue flicking across his cracked lips.
“Please,” she cried. “I’ll do anything. Just . . . don’t.”
His words seemed to echo from the deep end of an oil drum. “Then tell me where it is.”
She couldn’t tell him. The pen was the only tool available to her, the first ray of hope in days.
He lifted her jacket from the floor. “Did you kick it under here?” He searched the pockets, turning them inside-out. In one of them, he found a stiff paper. Genuine delight crossed his face as he inspected it. “What have we here?”
It was probably a tag or laundering instructions, maybe the manufacturer’s brochure, or a postcard shoved in the pocket by an inconsiderate tourist.
She thought of Alasdair, then William. Why . . . why hadn’t she just stayed on Iona? Her breaths turned wheezy.
Nigel flipped the paper around, nearly stopping Ann’s heart. It was a photograph. In it, William smiled and leaned against a short, stone wall before an ocean vista. A gloomy boy stood in front of him.
Nigel shook the photograph. “Who are these chaps?”
The boy had wind-tousled hair the color of ripe wheat. Her father would have called him an “old soul,” for his deeply set eyes conveyed an intelligence that belied his youth. That happened sometimes to children who witnessed too much, too soon. She swallowed hard, heartsick at the injustice of his situation.
Did William put the photo in her pocket? No, he couldn’t have. He left before Alasdair gave her the jacket.
That beautiful boy . . . She couldn’t rip her gaze away.
The child squinted at a too-bright sun, deepening the shadow of a vein crossing his forehead. His eyes were light. Hazel, she thought. His little frame sagged as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. He looked so troubled, so beseeching, so much like . . .
Who?
The answer escaped her.
Nigel flicked the photograph with his forefinger, then propped it against the clock radio. “Is this the man who would take you from me?”
Her eyes and thoughts followed the picture to the nightstand. How could the poor child be anything but miserable? Life stripped him of his mother. The courts designed to protect him took his father, too. Heartbreak and longing marred every one of his scarce years. She could have made a difference . . .
Regret pulled her into a crushing despair as she remembered the sermon Reverend Bachman delivered last Mother’s Day. She bit back tears that day, as she did each year, sitting in the pew with a potted flower in her hand. They gave her one every year, a pity pansy for the barren woman, a participation ribbon for the fat kid who sucked at sports.
Reverend Bachman declared. “A woman who never carried a child in her womb can still be a spiritual mother.”
She felt certain at the time he said it to make the Hallmark holiday less brutal for her. It was bullshit then. It wasn’t bullshit now.
Nigel laughed. “You should see your face.” He puffed out his lower lip. “Do you miss him?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Oh, trust me, I would if I could. Did he hump you, Ann?” He leaned down to put his lips on her ear. “Did he put his hard cock in you? Have his wicked way with you?”
Rage scaled the walls of a deep chamber. “Let me alone, you bastard!” Her ragged breaths turned to coughs as she fought back tears.
“My, what’s all this about? Oh, wait.” He made a slight gasp. “He didn’t, did he?”
“Shut up.”
“He didn’t. He didn’t shag you! Was he incapable, or did he just not want you?
“I said shut up.”
He climbed onto the bed to stroke her hair. “There, there. Don’t get upset. I’m glad he didn’t. You’re mine, not his. This time, I’m not letting you go.”
She shoved her forehead against his hand to push it away. When he reached for her again, she tried to bite him.
He jerked his hand away, leaving her writhing and snapping at nothing but air.
“Listen, you, I’ve had enough.” He caged her between his thighs, then palmed her temples, forcing her to meet his hate-laced eyes. “You wouldn’t want anything to happen to those two, would you?”
She panted from emotion and effort. “What do . . . you mean?”
He glared between greasy strands of hair. “Finding them would be a simple matter of taking that photograph to Iona and asking around. So, unless you want something terrible to happen to them, I think you’d better do everything I ask of you from now on. And what I want right now”—he licked from her jaw to her ear—“is for you to tell me where that goddamn pen is.”
He released her face, then sat up, his backside heavy on her pelvis.
Ann fixed her eyes on the photo of James
, confident now it had been his spirit hovering close to her in the cabin ruins that sultry night eight years ago.
I will come.
He would have made it, too, if she hadn’t been stupid and lost him forever.
She didn’t bring little James McDonnell into the world, but she would give her life to protect him.
“The pen’s under the dresser,” she replied.
Nigel had her now, she knew.
By the smug look on his face, Nigel knew it, too.
Chapter 32
Nigel announced his return with a slam of the door.
“Get up,” he spat. “It’s all arranged.”
Ann’s eyes shot open, her heart already thrashing from a nightmare involving a reptilian creature. She fired panicked breaths behind her taped mouth, unable to shake the memory of the being’s yellow eyes.
“You’re remembering, aren’t you?” Nigel flattened a scorched palm on his chest, a practiced move that carried no emotional weight. “If you knew what I have endured since that day . . .”
He smoothed back his hair. It fell again into a severe part slicing up from his forehead. His smile and tilted head expressed adoration, but tiny infernos of repressed fury in his eyes exposed his deceit.
“But here we are once again, at last.” He cut the tape binding her ankles to the footboard. “You will remember me fully soon enough.” He went into the kitchen, where she heard the zipper on his duffel bag.
Was her unsupervised freedom an oversight . . . or a test?
She eyed the door, wondering how far she could get with her hands taped behind her back.
Nigel returned with a bulging shopping bag and a granite expression. “What are you waiting for?” He kicked the mattress. “I said get up.” He grabbed her icy feet and yanked her to the edge of the bed, then pulled her up to a sitting position by hauling on her ponytail.
She could not contain a shriek as pain speared her neck and sent stars spiraling through the room. Pins pricked her feet as blood rushed to fill them.
Nigel dropped the bag. “Don’t you dare faint.” He shook her until her hair fell loose.
When she saw the flash of his blade, she squealed against the tape.
He rolled his eyes. “Stop that.”
Warm steel freed her wrists. Her arms fell to her sides. Oh, my God. She stretched her fingers, marveling at the pleasure in something so basic.
Nigel squeezed her elbow. “Don’t make me sorry.”
She nodded, sending a tear splattering onto her forearm.
He scraped at a corner of the tape covering her mouth.
She braced herself for the painful rip, but he pulled carefully this time.
“Can’t have a big stripe across your mouth, now, can we?”
It was too late for that.
He handed her an opened water bottle.
She took a draw while he dug a jar of Vaseline out of the bag.
“There,” he said, slathering a blob of the oily stuff on her lips. “You’ll look grand by morning.” He sat beside her on the bed.
“What’s happening in the morning?” she asked.
Nigel staged a cloying smile that sent chills up her spine and reminded her of the creature from her nightmare. “Haven’t you been listening? We’re going to Northern Ireland, where my shell is.”
Oh, brother. That again.
They weren’t going anywhere. For all she knew, “Northern Ireland” was some screwed-up region of the lunatic’s mind. Or the bathroom. Or a page in a magazine at the tea shop he visited every day.
He skimmed his fingers along her cheek. “It is so unfortunate you have forgotten our time together. Of all the fruits I tasted, you were unquestionably the sweetest. But I shall not despair. You shall remember me when I am myself again. Until then, we are both stuck with”—he spread his arms wide—“this impotent piece of dung.”
His eyes were glacial ponds. His words smelled like burnt fur.
She turned her face away.
He stroked her hair. “I must ask you, darling . . . Does your captivity not seem nebulously familiar?”
It did, actually, and today, so did he, but that was because she was going crazy in her confinement. She should be careful. Hostages warmed to their abductors, even fell in love with them. She’d studied Stockholm syndrome for a novel once, not in depth, but enough to know that the human ego would rather identify with an abuser than suffer repeated trauma.
“Pretty sure I’d remember being kidnapped.”
“I would be perfectly willing to tell you everything that happened.” He pulled two sandwiches from the bag. “It makes no difference to me if you know the truth, though I expect you won’t believe it.”
She took the sandwich held out to her.
He laid the remaining sandwich on the nightstand, then fished a garlic bulb and a box of extra-large bandages out of the shopping bag. “As I said before, we were lovers.” He broke off a garlic clove, then sliced it. “Only once, mind you, but it was so memorable that nine centuries could not erase the vivid details of that sweet night.” He pressed a hand to his heart. “I cannot claim you participated willingly, but you would have. Eventually.”
“Nine centuries ago, huh? Wow. Long time. Um, you do know I was born in the seventies?” You jack wagon.
He carried a fistful of garlic slices and the bandages to a dresser with a large mirror. “It is a bit beyond the grasp of your human brain.”
“Oh, so, you’re not human?” Stinking psycho.
He turned his head from side to side. “He’s not an altogether hideous creature, is he?”
Was he talking about William?
“Who?” She set the sandwich on the bed.
“Nigel Lynch.”
“You’re Nigel Lynch.”
“You are so dreadfully stupid.” He leaned closer to the mirror to squeeze pus out of his cheek. “Nobody’s going to be Nigel Lynch if I don’t get this mess under control.” He wiped away the ooze, then used the bandages to tape garlic slices across his laceration. “If only I could still jump from host to host, I wouldn’t have to worry so much about this one.” He looked at her reflection in the mirror. “Another thing stripped from me. As if being frozen in a rock wasn’t punishment enough. He’ll be sorry he didn’t destroy me when he had the chance.”
“Who?” Ann asked.
His gaze darted back to his own reflection. “No one worth mentioning.” He patted his bandages. “Alas, until we reach my shell and I can fully recharge, I must rely on this useless wart of a man.”
He clearly identified as non-human, a spirit of some sort. Did he believe himself the devil? She guessed it was more complicated than that. Perhaps, “frozen in rock” was a euphemism for a loveless period of his life. His “shell” might be his home or a state of normalcy, that elusive thing craved by the demented.
He was in a rare, talkative mood. She thought it harmless to ask a few questions. “Why do the light switches and receptacles burn your hands?”
His words puffed steam onto the mirror as he answered her. “The voltage feeds me, but damages my host. There.” He stood upright. “That’s looking better.”
“If you aren’t Nigel, then who are you?”
The intensity of his gaze could have melted crucible steel. “I am the unjustly damned, the King of Malcontent, consigned to infinite darkness. I am the shadow that darts along the edge of your vision and the mysterious breath of air that tickles your flesh and wakes you in the night. I am that monstrous thing you sense and fear but can never quite see.”
Chills rippled up the back of her neck. He clearly believed what he was saying. She tried to picture him as a child. How did he get so utterly messed up? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was he was absorbed in telling his story.
She eyed the door, wondering if she could make it.
“If Nigel dies, what happens to you?” she asked.
He turned slowly and opened his mouth to speak, but apparently thought better of it. His body was rigid, his fists balled.
Had he seen her looking at the door?
He cracked his neck, then brought the scent of garlic with him to the bed, a welcome change from halitosis and infection. “Darling.” He ran his fingertips across her lips. “How you vex me sometimes.” He noticed the untouched sandwich. “Eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
His anger flared like a fired musket. He snatched the photograph from the nightstand, then shook it in front of her. “You’d better get hungry if you want these two to live past next week.”
She took a bite of sandwich. Tuna.
He flung the picture onto the bedspread. “I have something for you.” He pulled an Alba gu bràth tee shirt from the bag. Sales tags dangled from one of its short sleeves.
She’d been in the same shirt and underpants since the ferry. Fresh clothes were welcome. A bath would be even better.
As if reading her thoughts, Nigel declared, “You smell like a sewer. You must have a bath.”
He would gawk at her nakedness. So what? He was plainly impotent, but she wasn’t telling him she knew that. Nigel Lynch could just go on thinking she feared that fat maggot between his legs. Captors who believed their prisoners too frightened for disobedience grew careless in their complacency.
After she finished her sandwich, he said, “Let’s get you into the bath.”
Yes, let’s. She recoiled in manufactured terror. “Please, don’t rape me.”
He sneered as he handed her the tee shirt and underwear. “I make no promises I cannot keep.”
She pictured William so tears would flow.
“Stop your sniveling.” He extended his hand. “Come on, I’ll help you.”
Her hips were sore, and her feet tingled, but all in all, she was in fair condition. Nigel didn’t need to know that, though.
The Scent of Forever Page 18