by Ranae Rose
He didn’t have to tell her she deserved it; it was obvious that he thought so, had already justified harming her somewhere in the twisted depths of his sick brain. Urgency surged through her, as potent as her pain, and she knew she had to do something, knew she’d die if she didn’t.
Unfortunately, the only thing she remembered from the self-defense lesson Liam had given her was the heat of his skin against hers, the thrill of being so close to him. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing; the memories inspired her, added an extra measure of desperation to her movements as she swung an elbow at Troy’s face.
Desperation made her hit hard. The point of her elbow connected with his nose, and there was the crack of cartilage, immediately releasing a hot gush of blood that stained her skin and dribbled from her elbow.
Elation tore through her, momentarily distracting her from her pain. She’d done it – she’d hit him, hurt him. And in his shock, he’d let go of her hair.
Head still pounding, she stood up straight, fighting to focus, willing her vision not to blur.
What she saw wasn’t what she’d hoped for: Troy Levinson was lunging at her, swearing. She moved in an effort to evade him, but the world seemed to spin around her as silver lights crowded the field of her vision.
He grabbed her by her hair again, this time clamping a dirty hand down on one of her shoulders too and spinning her, pushing her down against her car. The sun-warmed metal burned her cheek, but his hot breath on her face was even worse.
“Dumb bitch. You didn’t really think you could save your little boyfriend, did you?
“I been watchin’ you both for a while now. Figured out the other house was yours and you two were just shackin’ up together for the fun of it the night I busted that window. And you know what? I was gonna let you go, ‘cuz I figured you was just too stupid to know better. The pretty ones are usually pretty damn stupid, after all.”
His breath smelled like decay, the pungent stink of rot underlaid by something fishy.
“Coulda lit this place up while you were both asleep, but I didn’t. And you had to come around and get in my way, get yourself killed.”
He tightened his hold on her hair, pulling her head back, making her look at him until her eyes watered from the tension. “Maybe it’s for the best. You wanna fuck a pig, I guess you deserve to die like one too.”
At first, when she saw the flash of silver, she thought it was just another light, another something that wasn’t really there. The cold press of a knife blade against her throat absolved her of that notion.
She barely had time to be terrified before the sound of breaking glass exploded through the evening, drowning out the sound of Troy’s breathing, the echo of his words. Even with the knife pressed against her throat, she couldn’t help it: she turned to look at the house.
A stinging sensation told her the blade had broken her skin, but the sight of Liam rounding the side of the house didn’t leave any room in her consciousness for pain.
He stumbled at first, then began to run. His gait was far from smooth, but he was moving fast, right for her and Troy.
In a split second, Alicia took advantage of Troy’s distraction, rocking back and throwing her weight against him. They both fell backwards, and although the knife dug into her neck, she never lost the ability to breathe, never felt the devastating slice of the steel through her jugular, like in a movie.
So she was okay. Or at least, she would be. As soon as they hit the gravel she twisted away from him, kicking.
Troy threw himself at her, grabbing her leg and pulling her to him, crushing her with his body weight. In an instant, he had the knife at her throat again.
She struggled and felt the blade press hard against her broken skin. It hurt, and as her pulse jumped, she was intensely aware of the fragility of life, the ease with which it could be taken away from her.
CHAPTER 24
Alicia kicked, tried to throw Troy off as her pulse pounded in her temples, amplifying her pain.
It didn’t work – he was heavier than her, and her vision was clouding, spotting with darkness.
“Mama?” Troy’s breath rushed hot and reeking against her face, causing bile to rise up in her throat. He’d frozen on top of her, body still crushing her against the gravel, driving tiny stones into her flesh.
Alicia shook, suddenly cold. She couldn’t help shivering, even if the motion did drive the knife blade a little deeper into her neck. Frigid air surrounded her, and if her vision had been clearer, she would’ve expected to see her breath clouding the air in front of her.
“Mama, is that you?” Troy shifted on top of Alicia, causing her to yelp with pain as her back bruised.
“Had to do it.” He was panting, had his head tipped back, looking up like there was someone standing over them.
Alicia tried to turn, tried to see, but her vision was still mottled with spots of darkness and color, a sign of shock she recognized in the last lucid corner of her brain. She thought she saw the shape of a woman, but knew that was crazy.
Troy reeked; Alicia could smell his arm rotting. He was fevered, delirious. Seeing things, just like her.
“Mama, goddamn it mama. I had to do it and you know that. Don’t look at me like that. You deserved it. You were always—”
Liam came in like a speeding semi-truck, sideswiping Troy, knocking him off of Alicia.
He didn’t have a weapon. No surprise, considering the fact that he’d just jumped out of a burning house. He attacked Troy with his body, his bare hands. From hardly a foot away, Alicia had an up-close view that was disrupted only by the odd bursts of darkness and light.
Troy’s head bounced against the gravel as Liam punched him, but he took it in stride.
Alicia recalled the newspaper’s story of a difficult childhood, abuse. It had to have hardened him. He fought like he didn’t feel pain, and although Liam was larger, it was a ferocious match. Gravel sprayed up, pelting Alicia’s cheek, as they rolled.
Somewhere in the chaos, the knife flashed, orange and bright, reflecting the flames that had reached the exterior of the house’s front now.
She didn’t realize Liam had been stabbed until she saw blood, a red spot that spread fast, darkening an entire side of his shirt. His clothing had already been stained dark by smoke and gravel dust. He was bleeding badly, his shirt sticking to his ribs.
But he was still fighting. Troy’s head bounced again, and a grunt came from one of the two men – which one, even Alicia couldn’t tell. Liam caught Troy by the wrist, wrestled the knife away. It spun across the driveway, stopping maybe six feet away.
Immediately, she reached for it, crawling, hand outstretched in a survival reflex. She wouldn’t let Troy hurt Liam anymore.
She’d barely moved when it hit her: nausea so intense she buckled over right then and there and threw up.
By the time she stopped heaving, Liam was still hitting Troy, who was no longer moving. As she watched, Liam kept going, but it was like he was moving in slow motion. When he fell on top of Troy, unmoving, fear gripped her, icy cold and paralyzing.
She knew she had to make it to the car – she was their only hope for help. So she staggered toward it, torn at the thought of abandoning Liam.
She wanted so badly to stop and touch him, wrap her arms around him, feel him breathe. But she wanted him to live even more badly, so she soldiered on, determined to make it into her vehicle, stopping to throw up again just beside it.
Looking down forced her to see what a mess she was, with blood on her blouse and vomit on her hands. Disgusting, but there was no time to think of that. She reached through the open door and grabbed the driver’s seat, started to pull herself up.
A white and brown blur came out of nowhere – Holden. He leapt into the car too, apparently eager to escape the nightmare scene, and bumped against Alicia’s head in the process.
The world spun around her again, and she just sat there, slumped across the seat, silver and blue lights flying all around her.<
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She couldn’t move, could hardly breathe. Her head felt like it’d been cracked open with an icepick. She felt unconsciousness creeping up on her like a huge, overpowering animal, and everything seemed so goddamn unfair that she swore, not even caring that the obscenity might be the last thing she ever said.
With her eyelids weighing heavy on her eyes, she thought of the stupid conversation she’d had with Liam, the one about fate. It’d all seemed so possible when she’d been lying in bed with him, so very likely that they might be meant to be.
Now, the notion set her teeth on edge. All that talk about being spared for no reason, the snake that had inexplicably refused to send its venom coursing through his veins…
It didn’t matter. He’d survived that ordeal only to die here. Dying for lack of a cellphone battery, for lack of neighbors with the sense to have a landline installed. All the hope she’d felt when she’d touched him, all the sweet expectation, was slipping through her fingers like dry sand.
What a shame, what a waste. She’d finally found the person she didn’t want to live without, and now she was going to lose him. She might survive, if Troy didn’t come to and finish her off, but that thought was hardly heartening.
There were no guardian angels, no fated futures acting as a buffer against a violent world. Only actions and consequences, chance and the pain it left in its wake, for those who survived it.
Moisture spilled hot from the corners of her eyes as the world became increasingly blurry, increasingly blue. And then the sound of sirens wailing cut through the evening, making her head ache. It didn’t make any sense, and neither did the sound of boots crunching on gravel, the sound of her name being shouted from far, far away.
She thought she saw a woman again, leaning over her. An unfamiliar but pretty face framed by dark hair and white clothing. That didn’t make any sense either, because the voice calling to her was male.
Maybe it was only a dream, a figment of her semi-conscious imagination. With the scent of blood, smoke and vomit in her nostrils, she slipped into a blackness that was deep and dreamless, a place where there were no mysterious rescuers to be found.
CHAPTER 25
“It’s the gown, isn’t it? We’ve finally discovered something that turns you on even more than my uniform.”
“God, Liam, is that really the first thing you have to say to me?” Alicia’s voice was muffled by the thin hospital pillow, but she knew he’d heard her; she was speaking directly into his ear, after all. Leaning over his hospital bed, she had her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.
She didn’t mean to ever let go.
“I’ve been sitting up all night planning what I’d say to you,” Liam said. “That’s what I came up with. Hilarious, right?”
She lifted her head, straightening, her arms still draped loosely over him as she met his eyes. “All night?”
“Yeah.”
“The nurses didn’t tell me until this morning that you were awake!” A sense of betrayal swept over her, and she shot a long hard look at the man in scrubs who stood at the foot of the bed.
He just raised an eyebrow at her.
She mumbled something angry, but she wasn’t really mad. She was so, so glad to be talking to Liam that she couldn’t be.
“So I guess if you remember how much I love a man in uniform, you don’t have amnesia or anything like that.”
Liam raised a hand and combed it gently through her hair. “You’re the one who hit your head, not me.”
“Yeah, well I’ve been conscious for the past three days. It’s been hell waiting for you to come around after your surgeries.”
“I’m not so bad off,” he said. “It’s mostly just the drugs they pumped me full of that’ve kept me so out of it.”
“Yeah, that and the six stab wounds to your abdomen. Somehow I have a feeling those might have something to do with it.” She was trying to be a smartass, but her voice cracked, betraying how she felt inside: incredibly glad and incredibly fragile, as if she might crumble into a mess of happy broken pieces at any moment.
Liam had undergone blood transfusions and emergency surgery, all necessary to repair the damage done by Troy Levinson’s knife. He’d almost died; if Jeremy had arrived any later at the scene of the crime, he would have.
Thank God for the Riley County police force and the extra patrol they’d placed on Pine Hollow Road.
“How are you?” Liam asked, fingers still threaded in her hair. “Your head.” He grimaced.
“Your neck…” He lifted a hand to brush the bandages wrapped around her throat like some sort of ridiculous turtleneck collar.
“Oh, you know… I’ve got a concussion and soon I’ll have some scars that’ll be ridiculously awkward to explain. They gave me a few stitches in my scalp, too. I feel okay though, given the circumstances. Between you and me, they’ve pumped me full of drugs too.”
At the mention of drugs, the nurse spoke up. “Ms. Dalton, you have five more minutes. It’s almost time for your medication, and you really should be in bed.”
“I’m sorry.” Liam’s voice was a rough scrape of sound, but not the sexy kind. Well, maybe it sounded a little sexy to her, but she never would’ve admitted that out loud. Mostly, the sound of his speech simply let her know how much he meant it.
“It’s not your fault,” she said, because it wasn’t.
“Yeah it is.”
“I only have five minutes – we can play the blame game later.”
“Okay.” He took one of her hands in his. “Let’s talk about something else.”
For a few moments, she just stared at him, happy to see him staring back.
“Jeremy came by this morning to see me. My house has been burnt to the ground.”
She winced. “Yeah, I know. But look on the bright side… You can live with me.”
For a second, he didn’t say anything. “You sure that’s not just the drugs talking?”
“Are you kidding me? Liam, if you move away into town and leave me out there on my own, I’m going to be seriously offended. Not to mention too afraid to go to sleep without every light in the house on.”
“So says the girl who broke Troy Levinson’s nose.”
Alicia grinned – she couldn’t help it. “You know about that?”
“Jeremy told me everything.”
“Okay. Back to what’s really important – you’ll move in with me after we get out of here, right?”
“If you’ll have me, no one could stop me.”
Her grin spread a little wider. “Good. The thought of living in the woods on my own with all the lurking psychopaths and ghosts is more than I can handle right now.”
Liam’s expression was serious. “Troy Levinson is dead.” One corner of his mouth lifted in a wry half-smile. “It’s only the ghosts you have to worry about.”
“I know he’s dead – Jeremy came to see me, too.”
Troy Levinson had been suffering from blood poisoning when he’d set fire to Liam’s home, a complication of his gunshot wound. He’d died of septicemia within hours of being removed from the driveway by the police and paramedics.
She didn’t say anything about the other Levinson brother still being at large; it just wasn’t something she was up for dwelling on at the moment, and talking about it wouldn’t change things anyway.
“So you’re finally taking my paranormal worries seriously. That’s good to know. Are you sure you didn’t hit your head, though?”
“Guess I kind of have to take them seriously, after what happened,” he said.
She felt her gaze narrow as a sense of curiosity rose up inside her. “What are you talking about?”
“I never told you how I got out of the house when it was on fire.”
“No. This is the first time we’ve spoken since that morning, before you left for work.”
“I fell asleep on the couch waiting for you to get home from work. By the time I woke up, I was choking on smoke and the house was in flames. I might’v
e suffocated right there without ever realizing it if I hadn’t heard a voice.”
“A voice?”
“A woman’s voice. I thought it was yours – thought you were saying my name.”
“Okay, I might be able to clear that one up for you – I ran around the house screaming your name. I just sort of panicked, didn’t know what else to do.”
For a moment, he was silent. Then he shook his head. “Maybe that was it, but it doesn’t explain what I saw.”
“What did you see?”
“A woman. She was standing over me when I woke up. I thought she was you.”
Goosebumps erupted all over Alicia’s body, and she was struck by a violent shiver. The nurse moved closer to her, and looked ready to reach out and catch her, like he thought she was going to pass out or keel over or something.
As if she could possibly lose consciousness when Liam had her on the edge of her hypothetical seat. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.”
Given the circumstances, his reply had the ring of a morbid double entendre. She shivered again, and he squeezed her hand.
“It was like she was waiting for me to wake up. When I did, she started moving through the smoke. It was so thick and dark I couldn’t see anything, except for her white dress. She went slow, so I could follow. I was choking and it seemed to take forever, and then we were at the window.
“I broke it, and she went out ahead of me. Couldn’t see much, but I saw her move through it, so I went too. I jumped out and … shit, you weren’t there. Couldn’t see you anywhere, couldn’t think how you could’ve possibly moved that fast. So I ran around the house and there you were with Troy Levinson.”
The goose bumps remained raised and tingling on Alicia’s skin, and her mouth went dry with shock and gladness.
“Liam, that’s… You know it wasn’t me, right? I was never in the house.” She hadn’t been wearing a white dress, either, but rather khaki pants and a purple blouse that probably would’ve been invisible inside the smoky building.
