While Saunders hummed along with the radio as it blared out an Elvis tune, Lia peered through the dark woods pressing in on both sides of the road. Low branches stretched overhead, their thick leaves only giving an occasional glimpse of the full moon. The car’s headlights curled around a bend in the road, and the trees tapered off momentarily, exposing a steep ravine that spilled into more dark woods below. They were past it before the idea struck Lia.
Her eyes watered as she watched the road more intently after that, waiting for another break in the trees to present itself. If she timed it right, she could grab the steering wheel and jerk it from Saunders’ grasp, just long enough to send the car hurling down the side of the mountain.
There would be no coming back from a fall that severe. Lia was almost certain, but she knew that even if Saunders survived, he wouldn’t be able to explain her body in his vehicle, or the coincidence of Dr. Delph’s death, just a few miles away, involving a bullet from his gun.
Saunders’ humming stopped suddenly, and a gut-wrenching cough rattled up from his chest, spilling blood and mucus from his lips. Sweat dripped from his brow as he puffed to catch his breath, and he removed his bandaged hand from the wheel long enough to stretch his fingers, clenching and unclenching them a few times.
“She bit you,” Lia whispered, taking in Saunders’ symptoms with an alarmed expression. He turned his hard features on her. The brown of his eyes looked more yellow in the dark, and Lia prayed that she was just seeing things.
“Guess fumigation don’t exterminate everything.” Saunders wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, letting the bandage soak up his sweat. “I find a bullet works just fine though. No more mutts stinking up the apartment next door to yours. I can promise you that.”
Lia’s eyes darted back to the road in time to spy another curve coming up ahead. The trees broke apart and moonlight scatter across their path. Her pulse quickened and she felt sweat prickle along the back of her neck as she took a deep breath, preparing to make her move.
Saunders glanced down at the dash and reached for the temperature controls, cranking up the air conditioning to full blast. Just as his focus returned to the road, a pale figure stepped out of the moonlight, blocking their path.
“Sonofabitch!” He wrenched the wheel to the left and stomped on the brake pedal.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the car slid sideways, rising up on two wheels. Lia’s face smooshed against the window glass from the momentum, and as they passed the person standing in the road, she could have sworn she saw Daisy glaring down at her.
The image fled from her mind as the front end of the car smashed against the base of a tree and the airbags deployed, knocking the breath right out of her.
* * * * *
Lia groaned and pressed her fingers under her nose. They came away sticky with blood. Her shoulder ached where the seatbelt cut across her chest, and bits of glass scraped along her thighs as she squirmed in her seat. The smell of gasoline filled the car. It burned her throat as she struggled to free herself.
Saunders moaned beside her. She heard his door click open, but it didn’t move far. The front end of the sedan was caved in on his side, mangling the door hinges.
Adrenaline stabbed at Lia’s heart, and a survival instinct she was sure had died with Dr. Delph spurred her into action. She unlatched her seatbelt and threw her door open, feeling Saunders’ fingers graze her arm as she toppled out onto the blacktop road.
“You little bitch!” he screamed after her. She heard the snap of his gun holster come undone and quickly rolled onto her back, using her bare feet to slam the door shut.
A shot pierced through the door, leaving an indentation on the outside. The second bullet went all the way through, narrowly missing Lia as it pitted the road beside her head. She rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled toward the shoulder, veering away from the beam of the passenger side headlight. It had survived the collision, but only just. The car was totaled.
Gravel bit into Lia’s palms and knees as she found the edge of the road. The tree line was only a few feet away. She waited until she reached it before standing on shaky legs and disappearing into the shadow of the woods. Rain dripped from the leaves overhead, dotting her face and shoulders.
She heard the car door open, and Saunders swore as he climbed out of the passenger side. His gun went off again as he fired it into the darkness. Lia flinched, but she didn’t stop moving. The underbrush whipped against her exposed calves, and low-hanging branches snagged her hair and scratched her arms and face. She tripped over an exposed tangle of roots and her shoulder cracked against a tree trunk, burning as the bark scored her skin. She kept going, fumbling around more frantically as the darkness thickened, suffocating her in the humid foliage.
A twig snapped behind her, and Saunders’ voice echoed through the trees, his usual faux charm tinged with desperation. “Come on out now, girly. That was just a warning shot. If I really wanted you dead, you would be.”
Lia stood perfectly still and tried to calm her panicky breath before she hyperventilated.
“I swear to god,” Saunders shouted. “If you make me chase you down, I’ll take you straight back to Aldini’s, let them light up your brain with electricity until you’re vegetable. Is that what you want?”
Lia knew he’d kill her before turning her loose to anyone, even the depraved doctors at Aldini’s. But it didn’t stop her mind from spiraling into despair as she remembered her escape from the asylum. The woods pressing in around her were too familiar, like a time machine she couldn’t find her way out of.
On that night ten years ago, Lia had awakened to Dr. Godwin leaning over her bed, his wrinkled hand caressing her face. Welcome back, he’d said. We almost lost you. The strap across her forehead had prevented her from turning away, but the electric hum of her body made her limbs convulse violently. They’d been experimenting on her with various shock techniques, until her nerves were raw and twitchy.
The muscles in her arms had flexed of their own accord, expanding and shrinking with every pulse of her heart. And then suddenly, a seam along the strap restraining her right arm had popped, the leather stretching and tearing as she strained against it. Her hand had shot out and grabbed the nearest thing it could find—a fancy, metal ink pen attached to Dr. Godwin’s lab jacket. She jabbed it into his stomach, forcing it up under his ribs.
He’d been so shocked, he couldn’t even scream for help. By the time a nurse came to check on him, Lia had unbuckled the rest of her restraints and was waiting behind the door, a metal instrument tray held at the ready.
She’d knocked the nurse unconscious and ran through the darkened halls until she found an exit. A long trek through the surrounding woods finally deposited her out on a busy highway as the sun was rising. She was mid-vision when Saunders had arrived and stuffed her in the backseat of his patrol car.
She’d tried to barter with him, to exchange her visions for freedom. But somehow, the negotiations had not turned out the way she’d expected. The rest was history. Her pathetic, miserable history.
Lia gasped as light flickered through the trees, and she looked back toward the road in time to see Saunders’ silhouette against the glow coming from his wrecked car. He pointed a flashlight in her direction and then descended into the woods.
Lia turned and ran. She tromped through the trees with reckless hysteria, ignoring the sting of sharp rocks slicing up the pads of her feet and the itching burn of her skin as sweat and tears ran into her fresh cuts. A steep drop-off sent her tumbling down the side of a rocky bluff and into a shallow creek. Her hip bounced off a boulder, and she slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out loud.
The moonlight spilled through an opening in the canopy, sparkling over the bubbling water before it disappeared under the shadow of a downed tree wedged in the canyon at an odd angle. Daisy appeared suddenly, sitting precariously on the trunk. She dangled her feet over the water and watched Lia with vulturine eyes.
<
br /> “The man with the gun is ill,” she said matter-of-factly. “But he’s still better suited for the night than you are.” She gave Lia a disgusted look that suggested she wasn’t happy about the situation. Then she levitated off the tree and floated closer. “Dr. Delph will be most distraught if you should die.”
Lia sniffled and the cold creek water sent a chill through her. “Dr. Delph is dead,” she whispered, straining to hear Saunders’ approach.
Daisy folded her arms. “If he was dead, I would have no reason to help you, now would I?”
Lia shook her head. The ghost girl just hadn’t seen him yet. She didn’t know what she was talking about. “You’re just a ghost. You can’t help me.”
“I will try my best,” she snapped. “It’s the only way back into the doctor’s good graces.”
“You’re just a ghost,” Lia repeated, her voice dropping to a hush for fear Saunders was looming nearby.
Daisy’s glow intensified and the black of her eyes deepened, spilling out into the veins that ran beneath her transparent flesh. “I am much more than some hollow apparition,” she whispered. “And I am your only chance of surviving this night.”
Chapter Twenty-two
The Datsun groaned as Dr. Delph pressed his foot into the gas pedal. It bounced over a hill, and he felt his stomach launch into his throat as the top of his head smacked the ceiling. The road would start winding soon, and he would be forced to slow down, so he needed to make up for as much lost time as he possibly could now.
He prayed that Lia was still alive. He couldn’t imagine Saunders taking her if he just intended to kill her soon after. She was valuable to him and his professional ambitions. Dr. Delph’s hope was hinged on that fact, though it nearly shattered when he rounded a corner and spotted the smoking carnage of Saunders’ car. Rain speckled the smashed hood, and the engine made a clicking noise, still humming out its death rattle.
Dr. Delph’s brakes squeaked as he pulled off on the side of the road. What am I doing? he thought, pushing his door open. He was alone and unarmed. Saunders had a gun, and if he saw that Dr. Delph was still alive, he was sure to aim for his head next.
An engine roared behind him as he climbed out of the Datsun. Zelda parked Logan’s rusty blue truck on the roadside and quickly joined him, peering into Saunders’ mangled car for survivors.
“Selena called, but the pack is out under the moon tonight. What the hell’s going on?” she asked, glancing further down the road to where it disappeared around the next bend. “Whose car is this?”
The woods were extra noisy, and as Dr. Delph strained to hear through the crickets and the hiss of the wind, he thought he heard someone shouting beyond the trees.
Zelda’s eyes widened as she heard it too. “We should wait for Selena,” she said quietly, giving him a worried look.
“Not a chance.” He ducked back into his car long enough to grab the flashlight out of his glove compartment. Then he tore off into the woods without a second thought. Lia was out there somewhere. Saunders too.
Dr. Delph gritted his teeth as something slithered across his ankle. He hated the woods. For as fond as he was of holistic remedies and nature in general, he just couldn’t bring himself to find comfort in the thicker stretches of overgrown wilderness. It reminded him too much of his childhood.
His mother had been a free spirit, living her life recklessly and caving to every desire, knowing her time was fleeting. When she’d passed on, he was sent to live with Henry, the man who had fathered him. He was a rugged creature, much more suited to be one of his mother’s lovers than a young boy’s role model. He’d been a violent drunk too.
Dr. Delph remembered the last night he’d seen him, standing in the doorway of his cabin, a mostly empty bottle of tequila in one hand and a shotgun in the other. Dr. Delph had just packed his bags for Europe. He was seventeen, and tired of constantly being reminded that he wasn’t living up to his father’s absurd expectations. He didn’t know how to hold his liquor. He didn’t fight or hunt. He looked too much like his mother, and he had a girly name. It was always something different.
If you’re leaving, Chris, don’t even think about coming back. I’ll kill you, Henry had said. Dr. Delph had the feeling that he was relieved to be rid of him, but just to make sure he’d driven the threat home, Henry had blasted out several rounds from the shotgun. It was enough to scare any teenager senseless, and Dr. Delph had spent the next hour running through the trees that stretched between the cabin and the state road a few miles away, positive that the bastard was right on his tail.
Night descended before he’d made it out of those woods, and he didn’t see the barbed wire fence until he’d tripped upon it, his hands grasping out blindly. The barbs tore through his flesh as he tried to brace his fall, and the scars across his palms ached at the memory.
He hadn’t been alone in the woods since, and he had no desire to be. But tonight, none of that mattered. As he pushed through the thick flora, he focused on the future instead of the past and tried to process the new visions that the Fates had dropped on him, searching for something familiar or useful. He was sure he had seen a full moon in there somewhere. Maybe a babbling creek. He forged ahead, trying to remember where the local nymphs’ swimming hole was located. He’d seen it on the map in Graham’s study.
Zelda’s hushed voiced wove through the trees behind him, laced with enchantment. She was casting a spell from the road, trying to saddle the void between aiding him and obeying Selena.
An eerie fog lifted up from the damp earth, glowing softly in the scattered moonlight. It lent enough visibility that Dr. Delph was able to increase his speed through the perilous underbrush. He hurried, trying to stay ahead of it before it could reach Saunders and aid him as well.
No more than a few minutes could have passed, but Dr. Delph’s heart beat like he’d been running for hours. A rustling noise to the left caught his attention, and then an unseen animal grunted from the shadowy undergrowth, setting his teeth on edge.
He crouched down low, twisting in a wide circle as he searched for the source of the sounds. The fog thickened, and crickets filled his ears with white noise, disorienting him until he was unsure of what direction he’d come from.
Not too far away, a throaty cough sounded over the hum of nature. Saunders. Dr. Delph clicked off the flashlight. His breath heaved murderously as he forgot the long years he’d spent meditating and mastering the art of tranquil intuition. He was going to kill that monster—with his bare hands if he had to. The Fates had intended Lia for him, and he’d be damned if he was going to let a self-absorbed, dirty cop steal her away and condemn her back to the miserable existence she’d escaped.
“Lia!” he shouted through the trees. She was probably scared. He had to let her know that she wasn’t out there alone, even if it meant giving up his position. “Lia, I’m here! And more are on the way,” he added, hoping it would discourage Saunders and possibly scare him off.
“Christian?” Lia called out his first name. It was barely a whisper, but it echoed all around him and made goosebumps sprout up across his skin.
Dr. Delph stood slowly, turning in a circle and churning the fog as it coiled around the trees. “Lia?” She’d sounded so close.
Movement flickered from the corner of his eye, and his head jerked back as her face emerged from the mist. She stepped into a small clearing a few yards away, and if Dr. Delph hadn’t known any better, he would have thought she was a ghost.
Her blond hair looked white in the moonlight, wild ringlets haloing her face. Bits of grass and leaves clung to her battered flesh. One knee bled from beneath a pair of his running shorts, leaving a trail down to her ankle and across the top of her bare foot.
“Christian,” she said again, relief crumpling her features as she took a shuddering breath. Maybe the woods aren’t so bad, he thought, grateful that they’d protected her.
She took a step toward him, but then Saunders slipped out of the fog behind her.
> Dr. Delph didn’t have time to warn Lia. He could only watch as the heathen’s bandaged hand slid over her arm and chest before grasping her throat. His fever had worsened, and blood from a gash across his scalp mingled with the sweat of his brow, creating a morbid mask as it ran down his face. He pulled Lia back against his chest, while his opposite hand held his gun out at Dr. Delph.
“You’re dead,” he shouted across the void. It almost sounded like a question. He squeezed off a round, but it missed, splintering a tree a few feet away. Dr. Delph flinched and held up his flashlight as Saunders pulled the trigger again, but the gun clicked empty.
He swore and tossed it aside. His teeth gnashed together and his amber eyes flickered. The muscles in his neck and face strained through his skin, and Dr. Delph held his breath as he realized what he was witnessing. Saunders was going to shift for the first time, with his meaty hand wrapped around Lia’s throat.
“I can help you,” Dr. Delph said, holding a hand up as he took a careful step toward them. He just needed to stall long enough for Selena to arrive. She’d know what to do. At the very least, she’d be able to face-off with Saunders in a fair fight—well, mostly fair. She did have more experience as a nocturnal predator.
“Stay back!” Saunders squeezed Lia’s throat, tilting her chin up until she was forced to close her eyes against the bright glare of the moon. The storm clouds had moved on, leaving a clear sky and a moist chill in the air.
“You were bitten, weren’t you?” Dr. Delph tried again, still inching closer. “I know exactly what you need.” A shallow grave, he thought.
Saunders frowned, but he seemed to relax a bit as if considering his offer. Dr. Delph’s pulse hitched. He had no idea what would do once he reached them, but he took another step anyway, his concern for Lia pushing him forward.
Death at First Sight (Spero Heights Book 2) Page 11