Beneath Blood and Bone

by Madeline Sheehan

  I jumped down off the counter and stalked through the store, the broken glass crunching beneath my boots and spilled wine splashing up around me. Turning in a circle with my fists clenched, I stared up at the ceiling.

  “I HAD NO CHOICE!”

  You had a choice. You could have waited; you could have given it some time.

  Nostrils flaring, I shook my head. “There wasn’t time. There wasn’t any fucking time! It was too goddamn late!”

  And whose fault is that?

  My words caught in my throat as my stomach burned. “It was too late,” I said hoarsely. “I was too late.”

  You were too late! the shrill voice said, accusing me. You killed us! You killed them!

  “Not my fault,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I had to do it. I had to. It wasn’t my fault.”

  But it was; it was all my fault. I’d left them there alone. And those words, you killed them, those goddamn motherfucking words, they pierced right through the heart of me, flooding every inch of my body, thickening my blood and rattling my bones.

  Those words . . .

  • • •

  There were only two people left to find, two very little people—one with hair and eyes just like her mother, and the other not yet old enough to resemble either of us, but I’d hoped as he grew older he’d take after me.

  Placing my fiercely shaking hand on the closet’s door handle, I turned it and pulled open the door. The first thing I saw was the blood. There was so much blood. And in the midst of all that blood was a pair of fading blue eyes blinking up at me. Next to her, curled up on his side, covered in blood, his eyes wide and unseeing, lay my son.

  “Daddy,” Sarah whispered, her small voice a mere croak. Blinking up at me, her fingers twitched while the rest of her was eerily still.

  I dropped to my knees. With my heart in my throat and my hands shaking, I pulled her from the closet. Cradling her against my chest, I pressed a kiss to her forehead.

  “Daddy’s here,” I whispered, tears in my eyes. “Daddy’s here, baby girl.”

  “Mommy,” she croaked out. “Mommy bit me. And Jeffy . . . he won’t wake up.”

  Unable to breathe, let alone speak, I simply nodded and held her tighter. The rancid stench of death, bitter and rotten, was coming off her in thick, stomach-churning waves. Her eyes, once a bright blue, were cloudy now, and her once pink lips had turned a sickly grayish white. She’d be dead in minutes, and there was nothing I could do but hold her.

  Cupping the side of her cheek, I pressed her face against my chest and let my tears fall. I wanted to say something to her; I wanted to sing her a favorite bedtime song, or even lie and tell her that everything was going to be okay, that Daddy would fix this, just like I’d always fixed everything. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but sit there, with my dead son mere feet from me and my dying daughter in my arms, and sob.

  I wasn’t sure how long it took, maybe minutes, maybe hours, before she took her last shuddering breath and her little body fell utterly limp. Time had ceased to exist for me; not even the incessant pounding on the door from the monster who’d once been my wife could have pulled me out of the cloud of grief surrounding me. Nothing could.

  Nothing except the moment my son began to twitch.

  Carefully, I laid Sarah out on the floor and picked up my rifle. No longer crying but feeling sluggish and strange, as if I were drunk, I aimed it with shaking hands and pulled the trigger. Then I turned around and aimed the weapon at my daughter, and pulled the trigger again.

  The bedroom door burst open and Jeffers fell inside the room, dragging my wife with him. Still snarling and snapping, she attempted to free herself, but his grip on her hair was solid.

  “What the fuck did you do?” he shouted, his eyes wide and wild as he took in the bloody scene around me. “You killed them! You killed them!”

  Lifting the rifle, I took aim one last time.

  “No!” Jeffers screamed. “Not Jenny! Adler, no, she’s my sister, my baby sister!”

  But she wasn’t his sister anymore, and she wasn’t my wife. She was a goddamn monster.

  So I pulled the trigger.

  • • •

  As the horror faded from my subconscious, I found myself on my knees on the floor, staring up into the face of my wife. Long red hair, bright blue eyes, pink lips twisted into a familiar adorable smirk.

  “No,” I said, breathless, my watery eyes wide with shock. “No, you’re . . . dead.”

  “No, silly, you’re dead.” She smiled widely, the same smile I’d fallen for, the smile I could never bring myself to remember. Her hand lifted with my gun in her grasp.

  Confused, I blinked, my gaze going from the gun to her smiling face and back to the gun.

  “You’re dead.” She pressed the barrel to my forehead. “You’re dead, Adler!” she screamed, and the skin on her hand holding the gun began to undulate. It rippled all the way up her slender arm, leaving a trail of pustules in its wake.

  I watched in horror as one by one the pustules burst, allowing blood and rot to seep free. Shaking, I glanced up and found her face had gone gray, her blue eyes now white, her dry and cracked lips pulled back to reveal a set of snapping teeth dripping with blood.

  “Do it,” I choked out, my chest heaving with sobs. The barrel pressed down harder against my forehead, with enough force that the skin on Jenny’s rotted arm split open, revealing black, ravaged muscle and the yellowed bone beneath.

  Dizzy, I closed my eyes. I had nothing left. No one and nothing, not one fucking thing. And it only made sense that the woman I promised to protect, but failed to do so, was the one who would end it all.

  “Do it,” I whispered. “I killed them . . .”

  Moments ticked by. As I held my breath, the pounding of my heart was damn near deafening. How funny, I thought, that they say that your life flashes before your eyes right before you die. Not for me. All I could think about was the silence I craved, the silence that kiss had given me. The silence I hoped death would bring me.

  But death never came. After several agonizing moments of waiting, I opened my eyes only to find that Jenny was gone. I was alone in the store, aside from the hanging rotter, and still on my knees with the barrel of a gun pressed to my head.

  Only the hand around the gun . . . was mine. My hand trembled violently, the gun rattling against my head. Dropping my arm, I sank down onto my heels and surveyed the room. A shaking, stuttering breath fled my lungs.

  “Jenny?”

  There was no answer. Not even from the voice inside my head.

  • • •

  The drive back to Purgatory was uneventful, other than getting lost several times. It was nightfall by the time I pulled up to the gates, and without the energy to fight, I allowed the guards to search my truck, not even caring when a few of them pocketed some of my things.

  I parked in my usual spot, alongside all the junkers and metal shells waiting to be picked apart and used for something with purpose, and then I began walking. I chose the long route, through the surrounding fields instead of the compound, hoping to avoid running into anyone.

  Halfway home during my trek through the tall grass, the sun had all but disappeared and the outline of the moon could be seen on the horizon. Sarah had always loved the moon.

  “Sun, sun, go away,” she’d sing. “I want to see the moon today.” Jeffy would chime in, and because he was so young, moon had always sounded like moob. It had become a running joke in our family to call the moon the moob, something Jenny was constantly fretting over.

  “He’s going to grow up calling it a moob!” she’d yell, and I would laugh.

  “You said moob,” I’d tease her, and I’d keep teasing her until she stopped being ridiculous and her angry scowl slowly eased into a smile.

  But he never got to grow up.

  Swallowing back a wave of sorrow, I kept staring at that damn moon. “I miss you,” I said. “I really fucking miss you.”

  “E?”
<
br />   I dropped my gaze and shock stopped me dead in my tracks. Autumn was standing in the middle of the tall grass, my house not far behind her. She was filthy, dirt streaked across her cheeks, up and down her bare arms, and covering her clothes.

  “I’ve been waiting all day,” she said, her voice small and unsure. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said the first thing I could think of. “I thought you were gone.”

  She shrugged one thin shoulder, and her gaze dropped to the grass. “I was,” she whispered. “But then I wasn’t.”

  “Why?” I spat out as anger bled through me. “Why fucking bother coming back here when you could have gone home? That’s what you wanted, right? To go back to whatever hole you crawled out of, back to eating bugs and smearing shit all over yourself.”

  When she didn’t answer me, I stormed forward, stopping right in front of her. “Why?” I demanded. “Why the fuck would you—”

  “You!” she cried, raising her head and pinning with me those innocent eyes of hers, now filled with accusation and tears. “I came back for y—”

  Grabbing Autumn and wrenching her up against me, I bent my head and stole the rest of that sentence straight from her lips. I didn’t want to fight with her, and I didn’t want to hear her insane reasoning for coming back to this hellhole, especially if that reason was me. I didn’t want to be responsible for the repercussions of that stupid decision.

  All I wanted to do was kiss her again, kiss her and touch her, and make the world go quiet.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Autumn

  Beneath my green blanket, I curled myself around Eagle’s hard body, sliding my arm over his stomach and placing my cheek on his bare chest. Still needing to be closer, I draped my leg over one of his and tucked my foot beneath his calf. Although his arm tightened around me, he continued snoring.

  Last night he had carried me back to his home, stripped off my dirty clothing, leaving me in only my underwear, and laid me down on his mattress. Removing his own clothes next, he climbed in beside me, then pulled me close and kissed me. Running his fingers through my hair and pressing his body hard against mine, he’d kissed me until I was gasping for breath, dizzy, and aching for something more. But he hadn’t given me more.

  And I wanted more. I wanted so much more.

  It wasn’t as if I was completely inexperienced. I done most of what there was to do, aside from actual sex. True, it was years ago, and with a boy as nervous and as inexperienced as I was, but that was beside the point. I was ready. More than ready.

  Tightening my leg around his, I nuzzled the smattering of hair covering Eagle’s chest. I needed him to touch me, to pay as much attention to my body as he’d paid to my mouth.

  Slowly, I began to trace the eagle on his abdomen, over the wings and up to the head, and as I did the snoring stopped. I kept going, lower now, lower until I reached the waistline of his boxers. Swallowing hard, I slid my fingertips inside through the hair I found there, pausing when I found what I was looking for. It was soft and smooth, and just the small act of touching it and holding it in my hand made the ache in my belly and between my legs grow even stronger.

  Guided by instinct, I stroked it gently, feeling as it flexed, hardened, and began to grow beneath my palm. My breathing quickened and my skin pebbled. Everything about me felt sensitized and needy. I needed this. I needed him.

  The snoring stopped and all at once I found myself flat on my back with Eagle looming over me. His dark eyes scanned my face.

  “No,” he growled.

  “Please,” I said softly, not caring how silly I sounded, begging him for this. “Please touch me.”

  He stared down at me, his gaze dropping from my eyes to my mouth and then lower, to my breasts. Unwittingly, my chest heaved, and Eagle’s eyes darkened at the sight. He wasn’t unaffected by me; he wanted me too, and yet he did nothing.

  “No,” he repeated, shaking his head.

  “Yes!” I cried. Frustrated, I reared up and grabbed hold of his arms. Still pinned beneath him, I arched my body, bringing our bare chests together.

  E’s hand cupped the back of my head, and his mouth covered mine. Our lips moving furiously, our tongues tangled together as we kissed each other hard and fast.

  “Please,” I mumbled against his mouth, writhing beneath him.

  Breaking our kiss, Eagle pushed me flat on my back and held me there. “You’re a virgin,” he said.

  “I’ve done things,” I pleaded, feeling my temper spike. “I’m not a child.”

  “You’re a virgin,” he repeated.

  “And I don’t want to be one anymore!”

  Eagle’s brow lifted and a smirk twisted his lips. “Oh yeah?”

  Narrowing my eyes, I glared up at him and hissed, “Yes.”

  He started to smile but the expression was fleeting, soon replaced by a frown. “So you’ve done things,” he said, almost accusingly. “Like what?”

  I parted my lips and blushed, not knowing what to say.

  Grinning, Eagle bent his head and brushed his mouth over mine. “Like this?”

  Stretching my neck, I deepened our kiss. “Yes,” I whispered when he pulled away.

  Eagle shifted to one side and pulled me into the crook of his arm, pressing me tightly against his body. Starting with my cheek, he dragged his hand down my face, my neck, and between my breasts. Holding my breath, I closed my eyes as his hand slid up and over, cupping one breast.

  “Like this?” he asked, his warm breath tickling my ear.

  “Yes,” I said on a whimper.

  The ache intensified, straining my body, and my thoughts were a blur. He continued to touch me, first with his hands, grabbing and kneading my breasts, and then with his mouth. He nuzzled and sucked, and when he bit down gently, the coarse hairs of his beard against my tender skin only added to the incredible feelings he stirred within me.

  Eagle lifted his head and his dark eyes met mine. “Like that?”

  Breathing hard, I parted my lips as my nostrils flared and I shook my head. “No, not like that,” I whispered.

  He laughed then, his eyes lighter than I’d ever seen them, his features not quite so hard. I took a moment to marvel at the sight of him, but too soon his head dipped and he pressed biting kisses down my stomach.

  Although tense with need, I turned limp beneath him. My legs fell open while my arms lay loosely at my sides. I was boneless, weightless, desperate, and aching. I needed more; I needed so much more of him.

  After sliding my underwear down my legs, Eagle tossed them aside and moved on top of me. He stared at me a moment, his indecision plain.

  “You want this?”

  I nodded quickly because, God yes, I wanted this. I was excited and frightened, but so, so sure. I didn’t know how to say it, how to explain to him how much I needed this and that he couldn’t stop now. I didn’t know what I would do if he did. Cry or scream, maybe, or both.

  Closing the distance between our bodies, he kissed me softly, more carefully than before. I could feel his restraint in both his kisses and the way he was holding himself over me, his body tight, his movements controlled. I knew his kisses and these weren’t them; for some reason he was holding back, unfortunately when I needed him most of all.

  I grasped his shoulders, gripping the heavy layers of muscle there and digging my nails into his skin. “Eagle.” I practically snarled his name.

  He paused and pulled back a fraction to stare down at me. “I never told them my name,” he said.

  Confused, I blinked up at him.

  “Only Jeffers knew, and then later, Liv. But I never told anyone. They started calling me Eagle, you know, because of my tattoo, and then E for short.”

  “Adler,” I whispered, remembering when Liv had said his name.

  He stared at me and as he did, his eyes darkened, taking on a faraway look. Then he nodded slowly. “Adler.” And the way he said it, it sounded as if he was reminding him
self. Reminding himself that he’d been someone before the world had died.

  I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Adler’s kind of a weird name.”

  He blinked, then slowly smiled. “It was my grandfather’s,” he said, half laughing.

  He fell silent after a moment. We both did, with him propped up over me and me pinned beneath him, neither of us moving.

  “Autumn,” he finally said, shocking me.

  Autumn. My name. Expecting to feel all the ugly memories of Autumn’s life rise to the surface, I dug my fingers deeper into his skin and squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself for the onslaught.

  “Autumn,” he said again, and my eyes opened. Gritting his teeth, he shook his head. “I won’t be . . . I can’t be gentle.” His voice was gravelly, rough, and shaky. And hearing him like this, when he was usually so crass, so strong, so capable, it wasn’t just shocking, it was beautiful.

  The warmth came back, the slow burn in the pit of my stomach, rising, rising . . .

  “I don’t care,” I whispered, breathless. And I meant it. I didn’t care.

  I’d just barely finished speaking when he pressed his body against mine, fusing our mouths and kissing me again. Messy, hard kisses grew in urgency, faster and harder, and then he slipped a hand between our bodies. Over my stomach and then further, lower and lower, until I gasped as he slid a finger up inside me. A strangled groan tore free from his throat, and suddenly our kisses grew furious, fast to the point where I couldn’t keep up, no longer wanted to keep up. I just wanted to lie there and . . . feel this man.

  And I could feel everything. Suddenly I was hyperaware of every little thing happening to my body. Every stroke of his finger and touch of our bodies, every hot breath of air blown against my skin.

  “Autumn,” he said, my name a mere growl in his throat.

  He cupped my jaw, his big hand holding my cheek. And then he kissed me, a powerful and unforgiving kiss that was as brutal as it was breathtaking. Releasing my face, his hand grasped my hip, his fingertips digging brutally into my skin, and I felt his hardness where I needed it most of all, nudging against me. His jaw locked, he pushed slowly at first, his big body held rigid over mine as his black eyes blazed, the veins in his muscles bulging, straining against his skin.