by Evie Byrne
Her return smile lit the night. “I know my moral compass is a little tweaked, but I promise, I’m not evil. I didn’t mean to push you so hard.”
How is it that she—soulless, decadent minion of Alya Adad—was big enough to apologize, but he wasn’t? Why hadn’t he given her a proper apology yet?
“You mean if you had known that I…take sex more seriously, you wouldn’t have done what you did at the bar?”
“Wat, I was on the job,” she said, sounding as patient as a teacher. “I’d still have arranged a distraction for you. I’d have still hooked up Gunnar with his feeder. But no other option would have been so tidy.”
“Tidy? Did you get a look at that bar before we left?”
“Yeah, but all I saw were acts of sweet love. I’ll bet the only injuries that night were a suspicious number of back strains.”
Wat chuckled. “And a few rug burns, I suspect.”
Clapping her hands together, she laughed. It was a great sound, free and bold. “And I understand there were a few unfortunate cases of slip-and-fall—”
“Don’t!” Keeping his eyes on the road, he stretched out his hand, as if to gag her. She ducked it easily. “I don’t want to picture it.”
She tried to finish the sentence, but couldn’t get enough air because she was laughing so hard. He heard the end. “—slippery when wet!”
While she giggled, he said, “What about repetitive stress injuries?”
“Is booth-burn a thing?”
“Maybe some people got those little brass buttons on the booths permanently imbedded in their—”
A deer stepped onto the road in front of them. A buck. The biggest buck he’d ever seen, with antlers that seemed to span the road. It planted all four hooves with an uncanny air of decision and turned to stare them down.
Wat hit the brakes, slamming the horn.
His last thought before the impact was, This is not funny.
Chapter Twelve
Eva woke slowly. She was cold. Her eyelashes were glued shut. Her whole face was covered with something dried taut. Blood. Oh shit. She was covered in blood. The air reeked of it. But it wasn’t vamp blood. Not hers, not—
“Wat?” It came out a questioning squeak. He didn’t answer.
Her lungs felt funny—compressed—when she tried to speak. She realized she was hanging upside down, her arms hanging above, or rather, below, her head. I’m hanging in my seatbelt. I’m in the truck. There was an accident.
A quick internal inventory told her that she’d been knocked around, but that nothing was broken. She licked her fingers and rubbed at her eyes until they came unglued.
The windshield was gone, or mostly gone, and a small avalanche had pushed in through the hole, the snow stained red, thick, and bright as cherry syrup. All the windows, front, back and sides, were blocked. To her left, where Wat should be, she saw only more bloody snow. Her eyes went wide. Was he under there? Alive? Suffocating? At the first surge of adrenaline, her heart started to pound, loud enough that she could hear it in the shrouded silence.
Bracing herself against the ceiling with one hand, she found her seat belt with the other and released it. When she tried to draw up her legs, she realized something was pinching her left foot. With a grimace, she wrenched it free. Coiling into a tight ball, she did a slow, careful somersault, reversing her position in a very small space, so that she ended up crouched on the ceiling of the cab, which was upside down. She began to dig for Wat like a dog.
“Wat!” She hit something solid and grabbed it. It was hard, hairy, and frighteningly stiff under her palm. Her heart skipped a beat. With a few quick swipes, she brushed away the snow and saw it wasn’t a Wat limb—it was deer limb. She grinned at her panic. Even Wat wasn’t that hairy. She levered up the leg, moving it out of her way. The rest of the deer—or a good portion of it, at least—was in the piled-up mess of snow and blood where the windshield and hood used to be.
A little more digging revealed Wat. He hadn’t suffocated; there was plenty of airspace around him. But he hung in his seat belt, unconscious and disconcertingly upside-down. Like her, he was soaked with blood. The dashboard lights were still on, bathing him in pale light. She tapped his cheek with the flat of her palm. “Wake up. Come on. We’ve got to go.”
His eyes snapped open. They widened for a moment—doubly green in the dash lights, bright in his mask of blood—and then flicked from side to side, taking in their situation. His eyes focused on the deer leg. It seemed to hold him rapt. Then he took a deep breath. “Can you get out?”
Typical gentlemanly behavior—putting her first. A good sign that his brains were unscrambled. Her shoulders, her whole frame, softened with relief. “Are you hurt?”
“Try digging out through your window. Too much glass front ways.”
“Are you hurt?” she repeated, her voice sharp.
He blinked. “Don’t think so. But I can’t get out of this belt with you in here. There’s no room.”
That made sense, so she cranked down her window and started to dig. In a few moments, her arm broke through the snow, and a rush of fresh air blew over her face.
“We’re not deep,” she reported and shimmied through the hole on her belly, pulling herself free of the wreck. Outside, she thrashed around in hip-deep snow and looked around. They’d left the road and crashed headfirst into a ravine. A trail of flattened saplings marked their progress down the slope. How they’d ended upside down, she didn’t know. A debris-field of broken brush, rocks, and deer…bits…spread like a dirty apron behind the truck. She averted her eyes from the details. Dropping to her knees—ouch—her knees were bruised—she called back down the burrow she’d made. “How’s it going?”
“Cutting…the thrice-damned…seat belt,” he called back, grunting with effort.
Of course he had a knife on him. Good. Now, how were they going to get some help?
Ah. She poked back inside to search for her bag. Wat stopped his sawing mid-stroke.
“Phone,” she explained.
He nodded grimly and kept sawing.
The bag had been at her feet. She’d pulled it out to take notes. It wasn’t on the ceiling—a.k.a., the new floor—so it had to be stuck in the footwell. Reaching up, she felt around, found a piece of it, and pulled. It didn’t budge. It felt like the front end of the truck had smashed inward, and the bag had been caught in the crush. Reaching as far as she could, her cheek smashed against the glove compartment, she took hold of the leather and yanked. It tore. Repositioning herself into a new, even less-comfortable position, she reached into the tear and stretched her fingers, fishing until she grasped the satphone’s distinctive bulk. Moving carefully, she drew it out. The faceplate fell off in her hand. The display was smashed.
“No, no, no,” she moaned and began fiddling with it, trying to turn it on. It stayed black. “Don’t do this to me! Not here. Work, goddamn you!
“Eva.”
She turned to Wat. He was cut free, balancing on his hands. “We’ll figure that out later. Right now, you’ve got to clear away.”
Nodding, she backed out, cradling the broken pieces of the phone against her chest. Who knew how long they’d been unconscious. They were a long, long way from nowhere, and a storm was coming in. As far as she could see, there was nothing around but trees. Not even rocks big enough to hide under. They’d passed nothing on the way out of Brunnrheim—no houses, no call boxes, not even another car.
“Wat?” She called back down the tunnel. “Can you see my big bag behind the seat?
“Can’t get it,” he called back. “It’s pinned under here pretty good. Anything important in it?”
Crap. Double crap. “Just my gun and cash and bagged blood.”
After a little while, he said, “Well, it’s not moving.”
“It’s okay. Never mind.” None of those things would keep her from freezing or protect her when dawn came.
The snowflakes that had looked so pretty from inside the truck, swirling outside t
he windows in pretty curlicues, turned out to be wicked little ice needles that zinged through the air and stung her cheeks and nose. She pulled her thin gloves out of her pockets and slipped them on. Already her toes were numb. She’d left the nice, furry mocs back at Wat’s house and was wearing the Hated Boots. She’d left the Nanook coat behind as well, and missed it now.
Gathering handfuls of snow, she cleaned her face as best she could. Bending over made her head hurt—or maybe it just made her notice that her head hurt. When she stood up, the pain didn’t recede. It was making her crabby, but, as she’d been trained, she tucked her pain away where it wouldn’t distract her.
A moment later, Wat burst out of the tunnel, pushing a rucksack in front of him. “Might come in handy,” he said of it. Like her, he scooped up some fresh snow and scrubbed his face and hands. Turned out it wasn’t all deer blood on his face—there was a two-inch gash on his forehead. Frowning, he touched the open wound.
“Let me.” She gestured him to bend down. She licked her fingers and spread the saliva over the wound to make it clot. It was a good thing she wasn’t aroused—if she had been, her saliva would act as an anticoagulant to speed feeding. Vamp spit was sort of amazing that way.
“Thanks,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “No one has done that for me since I was little.”
“You probably need stitches. There’s the start of a big bruise right under it, too.” With light fingers, she traced the red shape on his brow.
Making an oval with his fingers he said, “About like this?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a hoof print.” His mouth twisted into a crazy grin that made her a little worried. “Good thing I’m so hard-headed.”
He waded around the truck, perhaps inspecting what was left of the deer. At one point he stopped, made a hand gesture, and spoke a few words. Then he lifted a chunk of raspberry-red snow and took a bite of it.
“Oh, man,” she said. “That is so fucking gross.”
Not only was it the blood of a deer, it was the blood of a deer that had tried to kill them. Blood from a murderous carcass that had been pulverized by a truck and dragged over fifty feet of brush and rock.
“You should eat some, too. It’ll help put off any shock.”
She made a face. “I’m fine.”
“We’re not in L.A. You don’t have to play tough.” He shoved the rest of it in his mouth and chewed, sucking the blood from the snow.
She gritted her teeth. “I said, I’m fine.”
“Sure. Whatever you say.” He bent and began to pack a tight, red snowball. “I know a place where we can hole up. It’s maybe five miles from here. Think you can walk that far?”
“Of course.”
He tucked the snowball in one of his outer pockets. “Then let’s get going.”
Wat climbed back to the road, following the path made by the skidding car, and she followed. Already the wind was blurring the marks of their accident. Between that and the new snow starting to fall, it would soon be difficult to make out the impact site.
“We can travel on the road a little while, but then we’ll have to cut cross-country.” He gave her a serious look up and down, and frowned at The Boots. “We should run now, while we can. Make time.”
“No problem.” She stood a little straighter and narrowed her eyes. Did he think she couldn’t jog a little in her fashion boots? She’d sprinted across rooftops in five-inch heels. “Maybe we’ll meet a car on the way.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.” He scented the air. “The storm is coming fast. Speed is everything.”
“Then why are we talking?”
He shrugged his knapsack off his shoulder, reached in, and pulled out a grey wool cap. “I wish I had boots in here, but this will help.”
She tugged the cap over her frozen ears. It blocked the wind and kept her hair out of her eyes. She nodded her thanks.
They jogged down the tire ruts in the road, back the way they’d come. Wat, in the lead, set a fast pace, and she focused on his footprints, watching them appear with each of his strides—one-two, one-two—watching her own feet stretch out to meet them. His stride was longer than hers, but she landed her feet in his prints whenever possible, as a game, a way to keep focused. It was best not to think about her feet, which were fast acquiring blisters. She knew they’d hurt more if they weren’t so numb, but whatever damage was going on down there was nothing compared to being caught out in a storm. Or, if it came to it, daylight.
It was hard to judge distance or time. There was the constant jogging—one-two, -one-two—the biting snow in her face, the long sameness of the road, the unreadable wilderness that crowded up beside it. Eva didn’t think much, just moved. One-two-one-two. Sometimes Wat’s wide back blocked the oncoming wind, sometimes not. Her head throbbed in time with her steps. It wasn’t a headache from whiplash, she realized. She’d hit it on something in the crash. Didn’t matter, though. What mattered was moving. One-two, one-two.
At a certain spot on the road, a spot that looked exactly like the rest of the road, he stopped. The sudden change jarred her out of her…what? Self-hypnosis? Because all of a sudden everything hurt. Beyond pride, she braced her hands on her knees and took a few wheezing breaths.
“Now it gets hard.” Wat said. His forehead creased in concern. “Are you okay?”
“Uh-huh,” She was okay. She was a Hand. Hands didn’t hurt.
His frown deepened, “Your face has turned to stone.”
Did he say her face had turned into a rock? That made no sense. Or did it? Christ. She didn’t want to think, she wanted to move.
He stripped off his gloves and felt the pulse in her neck while she scowled at him. “Wat—”
“I know. You’re fine.” He caught the back of her head in one hand and tilted it back. “Let’s see your eyes.”
Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, she muttered inside, but even in there, where things were a little fuzzy, she knew it was strange that she didn’t have the strength to argue with him. He held open each of her eyes and examined them in turn. Then he ran his hands over her skull, slipped his fingers under her cap. They came to rest above her right ear. She winced.
“You’ve got a nice goose-egg.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She was proud she was able to say it aloud.
“It matters.” Rubbing the back of his neck he looked around, as if hoping to find some help in the looming trees and snow drifts. “But we do have to keep moving. How are we going to do this?”
While he considered, she swayed on her feet. Maybe they could rest for a while. That would be nice.
A pair of feet appeared in front of her. Feet in a pair of fine shoes—super-high, peep-toed espadrilles in buttery, silver-grey leather. She wanted those shoes. Her eyes drifted up, and up, and up the legs of their owner, and she began to cringe. Nobody had legs that long except…
“What the hell are you doing, Sosa?” Alya Adad gave Eva the infamous Look. The one all the lieutenants dreaded. “Are you going to shame me?”
“No, sir. Never.”
“Then get moving. Move, and don’t stop. Ever.”
You didn’t wait for Alya to repeat herself. Eva took off running. Wat caught up with her and grabbed her collar. She struggled to get away, she needed help, but Alya was gone. Where had she gone?
“Wrong way, scout.” A length of rope appeared in one of his hands. He tied one end around her waist and the other around his own, leaving about six feet between them. “This is so I don’t lose you.” He took her chin between his fingers and said, “I’m not going to lose you, understand?”
Whatever. “Lessgo.”
“We’re going. First you eat this.” He took the bloody snowball out of his pocket, broke off a chunk and pressed it to her lips. She turned her head aside, but he held her tight and forced it into her mouth. His fingers were like iron. The snow began to dissolve before she could spit it out, leaving her tongue coated with musky, gelatinous blood. She tried again to spit, despe
rate to clear her mouth. Grim, he forced in two more chunks, each time holding her jaw shut while it melted, the blood trickling down her throat. She choked and tried to kick him, but he sidestepped it.
“That’s good. You’re going to be okay.”
The rest of the ball went back in his pocket, and he turned, gathering the loose rope in one hand. Like a dog on a leash, she followed. The deer blood slipped into her bloodstream, and as cold and dead as the source was, she began to know it. Know things the deer knew. Lichen and wind. Water under ice. Tender bark and scent of doe. There was nowhere to put these thoughts. They flitted in and out of her mind, along with her own sense-memories. The warm chlorine scent of her hot tub. A feeder’s salty blood on her tongue. The hot metal and gunpowder scent of the shooting range. Wat’s scent thick on a soft, worn quilt.
Wat followed an invisible winding trail. He threw his body against the drifting snow, breaking open rough trenches that she staggered through. Now her whole focus was not on his steps, but on the rope. The rope couldn’t go taut. If it went taut, it meant she was too slow. A burden. It slithered between them, coated with ice, a white umbilical cord.
The snow fell thick now. It came from all directions at once, white swallowing black. She imagined herself stuck in her mother’s snow globe, tumbling this way and that as someone shook the globe again and again and again.
“You’re doing good,” Wat shouted in her face. When had they stopped? His brows and mustache and beard had turned white, and his cheeks were red. He looked like Santa. A kinda hot Santa.
Again he checked her eyes. She dangled in his hands like a doll, noting how his face had gone to stone. If he looked that bad, she must be in worse shape. I’m bad. For some reason, the thought made her giggle.
He shoved another hunk of bloody snow in her mouth. This time she didn’t fight it. Her body screamed for food, any food. Snatching up the ball, she bit into it, and it crumbled. She cupped the snow between her hands and licked the chunks off her gloves with ravenous intensity. She ate all of it. The deer was there, flowing into her with every bite.
