The hair lifted on his arms. His skull began to buzz.
He tried not to look at the other corpses, but it was like they reached for him, pleading for escape. Their teeth were bared. Their tongues were purple and twisted.
That one had been stabbed in the chest.
The body by his feet was disemboweled.
Those two bodies had died clutching hands.
He couldn’t look at them anymore. He focused on his feet and forced himself to take a step once, twice. Again and again. When he reached Elise, the buzzing grew so loud that he could no longer hear Maksim’s protests.
James hovered a glove over her body. All the energy vanished. The clearing went silent.
He pushed the arm off her face to examine her. Dirty, frayed bandages were wrapped around her hands, so tattered that they looked like they might blow away.
Elise had her father’s auburn hair and his strong nose, but her soft chin belonged entirely to Ariane. Her eyelashes were sealed by ice. How had she died? There wasn’t a mark he could see.
He moved to unwrap one of her hands.
Her eyes fluttered.
“Maksim!” he shouted. Her broad lips parted to exhale silver fog. “Maksim! She’s alive!” He forgot to speak in Russian, but his message didn’t need translation.
His guide shouted and ran to the van. James shed his parka. The cold seeped through his undercoat as he wrapped her in his furs. Alive. It was impossible. Nobody could have survived an hour naked in the killing frosts of Siberian spring.
James watched the other bodies, waiting for them to jerk to life and creep forward, but they remained lifeless. Elise was the only survivor, even though it was impossible for one small girl to have survived an attack that killed a dozen others.
Unless she had been the one to do the killing.
He carried her out of the clearing without touching the other bodies. There was nothing he could do for them. He wasn’t sure he would have anyway.
The guide opened the van, letting steam escape the back end. As soon as James climbed inside, laying Elise between their extra gas tanks and a rattling space heater, he closed the doors again.
“Hurry!” James said, reverting to his limited Russian.
“She’s a demon,” repeated Maksim as he climbed to the driver’s seat, and then he continued to speak so quickly that James couldn’t understand if he tried. He picked up a word here and there—devils and hell, curses and fear—but he was too busy to translate. He cracked heating packs open and pressed them to Elise’s underarms, her groin, and the back of her neck.
James pulled a glove off with his teeth and touched his bare fingers to her throat. Her pulse was slow but steady. Color began to flush her cheeks.
A demon, Maksim said. Maybe. But she was also Isaac and Ariane’s daughter, and James promised to bring her back safely. He kept all of his oaths, no matter how unpleasant.
His driver shouted and gestured. James interrupted him to say, “Town. Take us to town!”
The van bounced and groaned over the path. He had to brace his back against the fuel canisters to keep them from falling on Elise as he searched her body. He found nothing. Aside from a few bruises, she was unharmed.
Surely a girl that young couldn’t have killed so many people without injury. There must have been someone else in the wilds—someone he hadn’t seen. It wasn’t a comforting thought.
He peeled the bandages off and flipped her hands to look at the palms.
No.
James turned her hands over again, heart racing.
It was the first time James wished Elise had died on the tundra, but it was also far from the last.
Death’s Hand
Available now from Red Iris Books!
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
About the Author
Death’s Hand excerpt
Dreams of Gray Page 13
