"Of course," Cain said. Without bothering to consult Ami, he strode into the kitchen with an unerring sense of layout and headed for the cupboard nearest the refrigerator. "The General said it would be stocked." He rummaged inside, his hands pushing aside ancient bags of chips and boxes of crackers to a loaf of plastic-wrapped bread. He made a great show of checking the expiry date. "Eight days past the Apocalypse, that should mean it has at least another month before it goes bad, right?" He turned a boyish grin toward her.
"Same shelf life as Twinkies, I imagine," she said. "Got peanut butter?"
"I'm not sure, I'll have to check."
Ami came up behind them and opened the refrigerator. "Don't feed her that shit. There're eggs in here and some canned meat. I'll fry them up."
Cain left the bread where it was then placed his palm on the counter, watching Ami carefully as he cracked three eggs into a bowl and whisked them into a froth. He said nothing as Ami's shaking hands razored off thin slices of Spam and threw them into a frying pan to sizzle. Theda could tell that both men were on edge, but Cain's demeanor was that of an inspector. He didn't sit, but stood within three feet of Ami, always in front of Theda. Just watching the unexpected tension between the two men made her seek a chair. She pulled one out from the table and sank into it, letting her arms rest on the top, lying forward so that she could rest her cheek on her forearms. She was so sore, so tired.
She woke when Ami dropped a plate in front of her, and for an instant she didn't know where she was. She jumped so fast, she nearly fell out of the chair until she caught sight of the two men sitting on either side of the table in front of her. Her mind washed messages down to her nerves and muscles, telling her it was okay to relax but it was only a concentrated effort that allowed her to do so. She swallowed, trying to rid her mouth of the flood of water that the aroma of fried meat and butter had sent her taste buds.
"Smells good," she mumbled, picking up the fork and using her fingers to push curds of eggs onto it. She shoveled the food into her mouth with fork and fingers, heedless of how it might look to the men, only thinking to cram as much food into her belly as she could while she could. Try as she might, she couldn't slow down. She might have chewed the meat twice before her throat began to constrict around it, forcing it down into her gullet like a seagull would a fish. She felt as greedy as a starving goat.
She was finished and rubbing her belly happily before she noticed the men weren't eating. "Aren't you hungry?" She asked.
Cain reached for her plate, getting up to dump it in the sink. Ami looked suspiciously guilty. "Did you eat already?" she said, directing her gaze to Ami.
It was Cain who answered. "This is for you only," he said.
"What do you mean: just for me?"
"The General left explicit instructions that the food was for you only." The horseman repeated his words as though she didn't understand English.
"I understood that," she said. "What I don't understand is why."
Ami got up from his chair, scraping it back noisily on the floor and glaring down at his feet. "Apparently this General of his--of yours--thinks I don't need to eat."
Cain took in his rigid stance with a casual eye. "You are not on the Beast's wanted list." He pointed at Theda. "She is. You can come and go as you please. You can get your own food."
"I can come and go only so long as I come back," Ami said. "He made it quite clear that he would hunt me down if I didn't come back."
"Are you saying you wouldn't want to be here?" Cain tilted his chin toward Theda. "I saw how unhappy you were to see her. Are you saying you would rather be out there than in here?" There was such method in his questioning that Theda realized exactly how military Cain was, despite his penchant for emotion.
"I'm saying, he took my choice away," Ami said. "I'm saying, I'm allowed out for a few hours a day. Three days here, left without anything to eat."
"And yet, I note that this brutal police action hasn't stopped you from plying your trade," Cain said. The tone he took reminded Theda of an English professor explaining a difficult literary metaphor to a young child. "Trust me: the General knows this, too. And yet, he allows it. You should be grateful for that."
"Oh, I'm grateful." Ami's face flushed and Theda knew that he was anything but grateful. She reached for his arm over the table.
Theda registered only three real words in the conversation: ply his trade. Ami was still dealing godspit. Even with a full stomach, the muscles inside twisted, sending a flood of water into her mouth.
"Is it true, Ami? Do you still have access to godspit?"
He looked truly miserable. "None at the moment. It's where I was when you got here. I have to sell what I can just to eat." He flapped his arms against his sides, frustrated, then pointed at the cupboards. "A stockpile in the larder, food in the fridge, and I'm not allowed to take a damn thing." When he crossed his arms, Theda noticed his hands were trembling.
"For what it's worth, I'm glad you're here," she said, by turns mourning the loss of a potential smear and feeling truly happy that he was here with her, that he was safe with her.
He turned his blue gaze to hers. "I'm glad you're all right, Theda," he said. "Really I am. I was worried sick. But, when a man comes at you with a huge knife and the threat of being Tasered again unless you follow his thinly veiled threats, disguised as instructions, to the letter--under pain of torture and death, I might add--it's hard to feel grateful."
She understood exactly how frightening Ezekiel could be, despite Ami's earlier bluster that he wasn't afraid of him. The Pale Rider possessed a steely calm that was more threatening than any action could ever be.
"When did you eat last?" She asked him.
Ami wouldn't look at her. "Yesterday."
She was far too exhausted to feel anything but resignation at his answer. She had begun to suspect that Ezekiel had his own strange way of dealing with things, that he might really and truly have been thinking of her safety first. Of her comfort. She couldn't truly be certain, but she did know that her friend was hungry, and having felt such hunger before and knowing that this friend had done everything in his power to make sure she didn't starve, those things surpassed any notion of appeasing the legendary General.
"Make yourself something to eat, Ami," she murmured. "Use up anything perishable first. It wouldn't make any sense to have it sitting there." She looked again, hoping that the horseman wouldn't give her any grief for her decision.
To her relief, he uncrossed his arms. Theda took that as a signal of surrender.
"There's a bed, right?" She asked him.
He nodded. "We should probably get you cleaned up, tend to your wounds. The swelling is going down in your cheek, but I have a feeling the eye is going to need some antibiotic ointment."
"Get shaking, then," she said. "If I wait much longer I'm going to fall asleep on my feet."
She left the kitchen to the sounds of Ami breaking eggs into a bowl, and in spite of it all, smiled to herself. She thought she could hear him humming.
Cain caught her hand as she passed through the hall, thinking to seek out a place to lie down.
"It's here," he said, pulling her into a small water closet with an old-fashioned sink and toilet. He eased her onto the seat and rummaged through the medicine cabinet above her. She watched the way his shirt lifted away from his waistband, and when her face flushed, she realized that she was staring at his navel. For a second, she was transported to a different bathroom, with a different man standing in front of her, his navel showing hairy and swollen beneath his shirt. She couldn't help a shudder.
"I'm about to collapse," she said, trying to hurry him along. There was only so much unwanted memory a gal could take.
"Got it," he said, crouching down in front of her and brandishing a tube of ointment that looked like it was from the '60s.
"Better than nothing, right?" she said.
"We're lucky there's some here at all."
She caught his eye as he tested the so
ftness of the tube. "Cain, tell me about Kat."
His fingers froze on the cap. It took a moment, but he finally looked at her.
"The Red Rider," he said.
"Can't be. The riders, the Generals, are all men."
He looked at her. "Were all men. Ezekiel killed General Daniel."
He had. The last Theda had seen him, he'd lain a smear on her tongue by Ezekiel's orders, saving her from the pain of torture. Later, in the sanitorium, Ezekiel had confessed to killing him.
"The Red Rider, " Theda urged, recalling her theology. "She's war."
He shuffled nervously.
"Cain?"
"Persecution," he mumbled. "Persecution and death and blood. Not just war. All things that cause war. All things that war brings."
"I see," she said, feeling dizzy. She had a flash of her father at the pulpit, and her mind went totally blank. She couldn't for the life of her think of anything more to say. Cain must have sensed her unease. He readjusted his feet, so that his knees were planted on either side of the bowl.
"Now, let's get you fixed up."
She grabbed for his wrist and held it. "How well does Ezekiel know her?"
"The General?" A thoughtful twitch pulled at one corner of his mouth. "I think they might have known each other. Eons ago."
He unscrewed the top and squeezed a dollop of ointment onto his finger. She was about to complain that he should wash his hands first, but he had already begun to smear it over her cheek beneath her eye. She winced, but he was gentle. She took the time to study the mark on his forehead. Being forced to remember her dogma, she knew, finally what it was for.
"I never thought I'd see the Mark of Cain," she said.
His grey green eyes leveled into hers and a slow smile crept across his boyish face. "You figured it out."
"I would have figured it out earlier if I wasn't so out of it." She reached out to trace its outline. "Is it real?"
He finished smoothing the ointment over her cuts and bruises and put the cover back on the tube. "Real enough."
"Does it come with a curse?" She meant it as a joke, but he took it with all seriousness.
"Maybe someday you'll use your gift to find out." He pressed the tube into her hand and closed her fingers around it. "Get some sleep. There's a room at the top of the stairs. Do you need something to sleep in?"
She shook her head. "I'm just going to strip off and climb between the sheets. There are sheets? Please tell me there are sheets."
He smiled broadly, and the grey green eyes crinkled at the edges. "There's even a blanket."
Theda didn't even bother to inspect the room that he helped her into. All she cared was where the bed was, how far away from her feet it sat, and how long it would take for her to get her clothes off. She was pulling down the sheets and climbing in naked before Cain had crossed back to the door and pulled it closed.
In her dreams, her mother was tapping her on the shoulder, trying to get her attention, mouthing sounds into her ear that should have been words but were static as if coming from an old television set. She knew she was twisting in her sleep, trying in vain to hear better, to face the speaker. The static shut off as if a switch had been flipped.
Chapter 14
Somebody was smoothing down her hair, trailing fingers down her cheek and on to her neck. For a dream, it was incredibly lucid, with a visceral intensity that made her stomach burn with longing. She wanted that someone to be Ezekiel. She wanted to feel his palms running down her arms, slipping onto her ribs, sweeping across her hips to find the tangle of her hair because that area, too, burned.
From the back of her mind, a whisper told her to enjoy the dream. Without godspit to manufacture bliss, a girl had to take it where she could. In her sleep, the Pale Rider could be anyone. Ezekiel didn't have to be the Beast's general. He didn't have to be the hand of death. He could simply be her lover, a man who cherished her skin and worshiped her touch. Yes. He would touch her that way, send teasing fingers to the back of her skull, kneading the muscles there, sending his other hand to reach beneath her buttocks and cup the fullness of her ass, massage it the way he was massaging behind her head. Both hands would be greedy for her, pulling her forward, pressing her against him so firmly that she molded to his shape. She would feel the thickness of his erection just the way she was feeling it now, and he would send his hungry mouth down to hers, forcing her to submit to the dance of his tongue.
There was a nagging pain in her rib cage, reminding her that if she was awake, this would be painful, but she forced the thought away. She told her body that in a dream, you didn't feel pain. You only felt pleasure. So she most certainly was asleep and dreaming even if her body didn't want to succumb to the orders of her mind, even if both body and mind realized that the pain and the pleasure were very real.
That someone was in bed with her.
She came awake to darkness and terror, thinking she was back in her grotto, that she had taken a double dose of godspit and was being assaulted while she was incapacitated. That her mind was softening the insult by offering her more pleasing alternative. She gasped in enough air to cry out and was muffled by a soft kiss.
"Shh," a hoarse voice whispered into the darkness, and she felt her hair move with its breath. "Don't be afraid, Minou."
By now, she wasn't sure if her heart was racing from fear or excitement. She just knew it was pumping blood as fast as she could pull in air to oxygenate it. She knew the thickness in her throat and the sharp ache where her throat met her breast was because she was relieved he was okay. That he had come to her. That he was lying right next to her and she wanted that feeling to last.
"What time is it?" she said, trying to force her heart to find a regular rhythm. "How long have you been here?"
"Long enough to discover you're naked."
She felt her skin heat up at his words and was grateful for the cover of darkness.
"It's not as if you haven't seen the whole package," she said, remembering he'd said the same thing to her before. She tried to struggle to a sitting position and felt her hands groping against him as she searched for the edge of the blanket. With a start, she realized she was touching his bare skin. Though she wanted terribly to flatten her palm against it, she eased delicately away from him, trying not to touch the hardness of his erection in an awkward bid to put distance between them.
"You're naked," she said.
"When in Rome."
"What are you doing here? I didn't expect you."
"One: I own this brownstone, and two: you should have expected me. You don't think I would just let you go without making sure you were okay."
He shuffled toward her in the bed, closing the distance she had managed to gain, letting her feel the fullness of his erection against her hip. Excitement rose to her throat, making the ache more intense. It felt very much like the moments before she took a godspit smear onto her tongue.
"What are you doing?"
"I thought that was pretty damned evident." His arm snaked beneath her shoulders and pulled her closer; she winced at the pain the movement brought to her sore muscles. She was still so damned tender everywhere.
"I'm sorry about that," he said, twisting one leg over hers and trapping it between his calves. He didn't exactly pin her against him, but the way his other hand took possession of her waist, she had the distinct impression that if she struggled she'd never be able to move. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
"You didn't answer me," she said.
The hand on her waist traveled a delicate path up her ribcage to find her breast. He thumbed the nipple into a hard knot before his head lowered enough to capture it between his teeth. He nipped it gently, scraping it with the surface of his teeth. She thought the moan she heard had come from him, until he chuckled darkly.
"You like that," he said.
She might like it, but that didn't mean this was the right time. She was sore. She was tired. She was damned terrified. And she wanted him so damned badly that she knew it
had to be the wrong thing to do.
"What is this?" She asked, guarded, anxious.
He chuckled. "What this is should also be pretty damned evident." He slapped her lightly on the curve of her hip. "Now, stop squirming. Or rather, squirm differently."
"But Cain. Ami." She wasn't sure who she was trying to convince.
"Cain and Ami can--how did you say it to me back at the lab--pound sand?" His fingers whispered against her throat, tracing her pulse.
"They'll hear." She knew they would, she knew once she allowed his touch, ran her hands over his body, she'd not be able to contain the longing.
"Only if you scream, and even then I've informed them to pay careful attention to whether they're screams of terror before they--well, before Cain--barges in. I doubt your Ami would dare."
"Is this really you?" She asked. "Because the last time I saw you, you were a very different man."
"Did you like that man more or less?"
"I'm not exactly sure I like either man, anymore. One of you left me in a rehabilitation center and burned my dying carcass in front of hundreds of bloodthirsty vigilantes. Which one do you suppose that was?"
She felt his shrug against her shoulder. "We'll let that one be the one you decide you don't like anymore."
"Was it necessary, Ezekiel? Did you really need to do that?"
"What do you think?"
His hand froze on her throat, the fingers curving over one side, the thumb over the other.
"Enough with the arguing, Theda," he said and planted both forearms on either side of her head, leaning over her. She could make out almost all of his features in the light that came from the window. She could tell he had grim determination setting his jaw into a stubborn angle. She could even see how wide his pupils were as he studied her face. She could see how he had pulled down the shade of obstinate complacency.
"I am going to take you," he murmured. "You need to understand that. After all that has gone on, after all that may yet still happen, I'm not going to let this night pass without burying myself deep inside you."
Theta Waves Box Set: The Complete Trilogy (Books 1-3) (Theta Waves Trilogy) Page 28
