They’d actually had a hot breakfast that morning. And they had plans to cook dinner, too. Canned chicken with rice. They even had canned fruit for dessert.
Bresh was sitting on the porch with her. Earlier, they had bathed in the pond not far from the cabin and they’d changed into clothes that they had found packed away in boxes in the cabin. Right now Bresh had pulled up a porch chair and he was looking at his reflection in a little mirror that he had propped up on the porch railing. He began spreading lather on his chin and cheeks as he prepared to shave. Aili watched him for a moment with a kind of fascination, mesmerized by his seriousness as he leaned forward, completely absorbed in the task. He turned his face to one side and scraped the razor slowly through the white foam, then he did the same on the other side.
In his mirror, Bresh had caught a glimpse of Aili watching him. His frown of concentration remained in place as he rinsed the last traces of lather from his face and tried to ignore her, though, at times, he admitted inwardly, that was easier said than done.
“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” he heard as she turned to look back at the rugged landscape.
He agreed. It was nice. He grunted some kind of answer which seemed to satisfy her.
That life could suddenly be this laid-back again had come as a surprise to him. Just a few days ago he would never have believed that he could feel even remotely relaxed again, much less feel a deep sense of contentment over such a small thing as sitting on a porch. He had to adjust to the normalcy. The slow pace. The peace and quiet. That took some getting used to. The only sounds to disturb the silence were the bird songs in the trees around them. There was no threat hanging over their heads at the moment. No running. No fighting. No disruptive drama that could turn deadly at a moment’s notice.
He knew that tomorrow everything would likely change. Tomorrow they would leave this place and things would almost certainly go back to the way they were. He had to get his mind around that and accept it. This respite would not last long, no matter how much he wanted it to. But for now, for as long as it did last, he would cherish every moment because the memory would be an anchor for him.
“I don’t remember the last time I watched the sun come up,” she said. “I forgot how beautiful it was.”
He stared at her profile, thinking, yeah, beautiful.
She lifted her face, exposing the smooth column of her throat and the delicate line of her chin. Wild geese were soaring high overhead. Two huge V’s of them against a sky of deep, deep blue.
“They still fly south,” she said so softly that her voice was like feathers brushing over him, drawing out an even deeper feeling of contentment. She closed her eyes, completely oblivious to the effect she had upon him. For that he was thankful.
“What if we migrated?” she asked as if that thought had just occurred to her. “After we find Elan. Maybe the walkers are already freezing solid in the far North. Maybe they’ll stay that way. That’s possible, isn’t it?”
“We’d have to keep from freezing to death ourselves.”
She nodded, thoughtful for a while before she said, “It’s hard to imagine that I used to think my life was boring. Right now I’d give anything to have one boring day.” Her expression changed to a questioning one. “I wonder what day it is today.”
He shook his head and shrugged wide shoulders. He didn’t have a clue as to what day it was, either.
He looked out at the lake through the trees. “We could go fishing sometime, somewhere, maybe cook up a catfish supper,” he said because he didn’t know what else to say to fill the sudden void of silence that had fallen between them. Why he should suddenly find silence so uncomfortable he didn’t know. “Have you ever been fishing?”
“Fishing? A few times. Way back in my old boring lifetime. I didn’t think it was a very exciting way to spend a morning, but my cousins would drag me out to the pond behind their house.”
He frowned down at the porch floor between his boots. “If it bores you- ”
“I didn’t say it would bore me now.”
She drew a deep breath and released it slowly. “It’s amazing how everything else around us, besides the deads, has stayed the same. The birds still migrate. They still sing. The flowers and the trees still grow in spite of it all. The seasons change. Maybe we’re supposed to learn something from that. Maybe it’s a lesson that life does go on no matter what. And maybe that means we’re supposed to go on.”
He was staring into the distance, apparently having no answers for her but listening all the same. She knew he was listening because every once in a while he nodded, agreeing with her. And she suddenly realized something else that she found amazing. That they were having not an argument, but an actual conversation. A long one. And it didn’t include a desperate plan or one single command. A faint smile touched her lips.
“You’re being pretty patient sitting there listening to me talk about nothing,” she told him.
“Do I have any choice?” As he leaned back in his porch chair, one corner of his mouth drew back into a half smile. A very lazy, very sexy half smile. “Would you be quiet even if I told you to?”
She actually laughed. Bresh realized he had never heard her laugh before.
“No. Probably not,” she answered him.
The sound of her laughter was such a simple thing, but it touched something deep inside him.
“You know,” she went on. “I have been having a feeling lately that I’m going to see Elan soon. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. I just- feel it. I’m not so worried about him as I was. Do you think that’s foolish?”
He shook his head. “I’ve seen you predict things before that came true, without it making any sense at all.”
“I hope I’m right about this,” she said. “I- ” She paused for a moment as a frown appeared on her face. “Actually, I have been wrong about a lot of things, too. Life can be very unpredictable. Even before- all this, there were no guarantees. About anything. You start out with all these hopes and dreams, and then everything changes. You can’t foresee what’s coming. You can’t prepare for it. All you can do is react according to who you are inside.”
When he didn’t comment, she slanted a glance in his direction. “What are you thinking about right now?” she asked right out, watching the glow of sunlight gleaming on his hair that was the color of a raven’s wing.
A bath, not to mention a change of clothes, had transformed him. When he had come back from the lake, he had nearly taken her breath away, he was that handsome. She realized with some surprise that he had been making an effort with his appearance lately. Maybe because in an angry moment she had told him that he was more like a scarecrow than a human being. She had meant that in a Wizard-of-Oz kind of way, as in he had no heart, but she suspected that he had thought she had meant his physical appearance.
She was sorry for what she had said, for the truth was that he had stayed by her, risking his life sometimes. Many times. For her and ultimately for Elan. He could have left her behind and saved himself a lot of trouble. Instead he had stayed by her side, teaching her his own version of a crash course in how to survive a zombie apocalypse.
In a short period of time, he had taught her a great deal about staying alive in a dangerous world. He was always testing out potential weapons. He made her carry not one knife in her boot safely, but two. A can of pepper spray, he insisted, was a necessity. He made her promise to carry one on her at all times.
“Does it really work on deads?” she had asked.
“Deads?” he had echoed, turning to her with those deep indigo eyes. “I’d better not catch you trying to use pepper spray on a dead.”
“What are you smiling about?” he suddenly asked, drawing her back into the present.
She shifted her gaze towards him, but her eyes quickly skittered away. Why she suddenly looked so embarrassed, Bresh had no idea. The woman stood up to him like no man had ever stood up to him before. And she had no end of names that she called him when she
was on her high horse. Stonehenge Man for one. The model for Mt. Rushmore for another. Which was better than being an insensitive, unfeeling jerk, he supposed. She used that one a lot. Sometimes, if she was mad enough, she just sputtered something incoherent. Most times she looked so damned serious when she was ranting at him that it was about all he could do not to burst out laughing. She’d stomp her foot and fix him with a lethal glare that would have withered most men. Even worse were the times when she would stop what she was doing and look up slowly with a low-voiced “What did you say?” Not to mention the times when she would simply catch her breath, so wrought up that she couldn’t find words to slay him no matter how hard she tried.
To his credit, he usually managed to maintain a stoic expression during such times, but sometimes- Sometimes it was all he could do to keep from laughing out loud at the outlandish descriptions she could come up with. More than once, he’d had to walk away from her so she wouldn’t see him laugh. And no doubt, if she ever suspected how much amusement she had provided him, she would show him no mercy.
But as he thought over their tempestuous relationship, his expression sobered. Something had changed between them in the past week or so. They had been sliding gradually into an easier relationship where they were getting more comfortable with each other. But there was something else happening. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something that felt strangely like an electrical current in the air whenever they got too close to each other. He couldn’t fathom it. He only knew that he had to do his damndest to keep her from knowing how she affected him. Still, there were times when he thought that she was feeling something, too, and-
Hell.
He was just fooling himself. She would think up a whole new vocabulary of names to describe him if she knew some of the things he was thinking. And not a one of them would be flattering.
You pervert.
Yeah. He could imagine her spewing that one out.
He felt like a man who knew he was in danger of losing his moorings in the middle of a stormy sea and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to change it.
Best to go inside, he told himself, forcing himself not to look in her direction again. Out of sight, out of mind. He silently repeated the phrase, sincerely hoping that it would prove to be true.
But in the front room of the cabin, despite his best intentions, he found himself thinking about Aili again as he stared out the big bay window at the sunlight sparkling on the surface of the pond. She had bathed in that pond earlier, and as he had kept watch, she had admonished him more than once to keep a close eye on the woods because she didn’t want to be caught unaware while she was stark naked. His imagination had caught him unaware as he sat with his back to her. He had been imagining her not only stark naked, but dripping wet behind him, and lathered up with that sweet-smelling soap she’d found at the cabin because she did not, she had told him, want to take a bath just to end up smelling like fish and pond water.
To say that her quiet splashes and her sounds of pleasure had been a distraction was an understatement. After a few smothered squeals and gasps before she got used to the cold water, of course.
In the end he couldn’t resist taking a bath himself to wash off countless layers of gritty dirt and sweat. And now? Now he found himself wondering how he had gotten to the point where he lived just to see that smile on her face in unguarded moments and hear the near-pleasure in her voice when he did a kindness that she hadn’t expected. He was realizing, too, that he spent a good deal of his time thinking about a better world that he might build for her where he could keep her safe and happy, and not just on a temporary basis. Of course, none of that was possible if they didn’t first find her son. That was her priority. Her only priority.
After her bath, he’d had to stare at her transformation for a long time before he could recover. The change in her appearance had just about knocked the breath out of him. And after his bath, she had smiled right at him after giving him a look from head to toe. He suspected that it was because he was wearing clothes that she had picked out for him. She had smiled maybe in part because he had done as she had requested. And maybe in part because she thought it was an improvement. No scarecrows today.
And she? She said she was going to imagine that she was Cinderella. Just for twenty-four hours. If they had that long. She would make herself believe, if only for one day, that the evil spell cast over the world would finally be broken and that there would be a happily-ever-after.
Maybe there was no fairy godmother around. There definitely was no ball to go to. And there sure as hell wasn’t a prince in sight. But today, he decided, if she wanted to pretend that she was a princess in a fairy tale, well, hell- that’s what she should do. He knew how far she had come to open herself up like that. She did look as close to content as he had ever seen her, as if, for a moment at least, the world was not in shattered pieces around them and they were not bashing in the heads of decomposing corpses.
Chapter 12
“Where is she?”
Hunter’s husky words cut a pathway straight to Desah’s core. Rooted to the spot by the agony reflected in his gaze, she turned her face away for a moment.
Hunter repeated his question. “Where is she?”
The news Desah had brought about Dani had stunned him. Desah had appeared out of nowhere right after the incident at the cemetery. And the first thing she had done was to tell Hunter about Dani. But he couldn’t grieve for her. Not yet. How did he know this wasn’t another one of Desah’s lies?
“I’m sorry, Hunter. But nothing’s going to change what happened,” Desah informed him as she carefully watched his face.
It wasn’t like he didn’t know that with every fiber of his being. If it was the truth.
“You’ve got no reason not to tell me,” he said with a ragged edge to his voice. “Just tell me, Desah.” It was a plea, an emotional, heart-rending one.
To anyone but Desah it was heart-rending.
So he still cared, she thought bitterly, jealousy twisting like a knife blade inside her. Was she really going to have to compete with a ghost now? The knowledge drove any semblance of mercy or compassion from her heart as she said in a brittle voice, “She had a decent burial.”
“Burial,” he echoed hoarsely. “You do know that the dead come back to life, don’t you?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“And you know that because?”
“Because she was laying there for days. And nothing happened.”
He stood there stone-faced, trying hard not to think of Dani that way. Trying to keep his anger tamped down because Desah seemed so damned coldblooded about it all.
“Do you think I’m lying to you?” he heard.
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
To Desah, his answer felt just like a slap in the face.
“She was my sister,” she reminded him, something dark and unsteady running through her voice.
“Your step sister,” he corrected.
How ungrateful could he be? Desah wondered. It had been a decent burial for these desperate times, even if it had been a hasty burial. But Hunter apparently wasn’t going to allow her even a tiny shred of gratitude. Not one. Even though she had stayed with Dani, even after she had been so slow in dying.
Did he even understand how afraid she had been? How hungry? How alone? Days had passed and Elan had not come back. For three harrowing days and nights she had waited for Elan. That had not been easy for her. Especially since she didn’t know if she was going to eventually find herself locked up with something that wanted to kill her. In the end, she had grown tired of watching over a corpse. And when Jordan and Crede had showed up, who could blame her for not wanting to stay around there any longer?
“Did she say anything to you?”
Desah knew exactly what he meant. He wanted to know if Dani said anything about the trouble between them.
“You mean about you and Tiffany?”
Hunter�
�s jaw hardened. “I already know what she saw. Or thought she saw. What I want to know is why she didn’t return my calls. Why she refused to even talk to me about it.”
“I- I wouldn’t know,” Desah replied, but she had to keep herself from laughing out loud over that one. Dani couldn’t make any calls if she didn’t even have her phone. Desah had seen to that.
Deklin and Desah had planned it all out very carefully. They had to make Dani question, and then turn away from, Hunter. Another woman was the only way to make that happen. Desah had wanted to play the role of seductress herself, but Dek had thought that Dani would see right through that. So he had talked Tiffany Curry into going along with their plan. Hunter had not taken the bait, of course, but Desah hadn’t expected him to. Tiffany had been convincing. So convincing that Desah herself had been jealous to see them together. The important thing was that it worked. All that was left was to wait for Dani and Hunter to seek comfort elsewhere. Desah and Dek would be waiting to fill those roles.
But Hunter wasn’t seeking comfort, or anything else, from her. In fact, as he stared out the window, it seemed like he didn’t want anything to do with her at all. She felt it all slipping away from her.
“She did say one thing.”
Hunter turned back to her.
“She said that seeing you and Tiffany together made her realize that she had been wasting time on the wrong man. I think it was a big part of her decision to go back to Dek. She admitted to me that she’d never really gotten over him.”
And now she had committed herself to another lie. For a moment, seeing the doubt on Hunter’s face, Desah feared that she had overplayed her hand. She knew she had to embellish the lie to make it more believable. “That’s why Dek sent Jordan and Crede to look for her. Because Dani and Dek had gotten close again. He’s been searching for Dani all this time. He never stopped searching for her.”
When Hunter finally did speak, there was a trace of bitterness, and more, in his voice. “So she believed the lie was true till the end?”
Deadrise (Book 3): Savage Blood Page 12
