I grinned at Syd. I’d caught him -- he’d started in here – he’d have to finish it in here. He and Karl weren’t strong enough as humans to get me out the door, and there were too many witnesses for either of them to go were.
“Where were you? Where the fuck were you?” I yelled, clutching my stomach, like he’d hurt me, making a show. “You were supposed to be guarding him!” I howled, making as much of a scene as I could.
Karl made a wild noise and accepted my challenge. He grabbed a chair, unseating its owner, and ran for me.
After that we were a tangle of blows. Wood crunched overhead, punches that would have shattered a normal man’s jaw, ribs, sternum. I gave as good as I got, staying upright and always in bounds, us playing a game with each other right in front of men who watched from the sidelines with glittering eyes. This was a family fight, for them and for us, they weren’t going to get involved.
Karl was slower than I remembered. He was older than me and easier to harry, I got in twice as many blows on his doughy body as he did mine.
Whereas Syd was still one muscular slab of a man, underneath seven years of softer living. There was a reason he was still our alpha after all this time. The look in his eyes – challenging him here – I’d taken my life into my hands, and but for the rules of the pack he’d wring it out of me.
I was chipping away at him though, one punch at a time. My wolf stirred, panicked and ecstatic in turns. Could I beat him? If I did, what would that make me? Blood raced through me, dripping out my broken nose, running out of cuts up and down my body, ringing inside my ears. Blood – and hope.
And then JD, Mike, and Georgie came through the door – enough to overwhelm me and carry me outside, one were to each of my limbs.
Chapter Eleven
I thumbed through the book by the light of the nearest oil lamp. I recognized all the names in it – Vincent had told me everything, and reading his notes made it feel like he was whispering to me again. There were deaths listed, the locations of bodies and tossed guns, details that only someone on the inside would know.
And some of the pages were dog-eared.
In all of Vincent’s books – and he’d had a lot of them – he’d never bent the corner of a single page. That was all me, I was the dog-earrer and spine-breaker, the one who put things that weren’t bookmarks, like remote controls and coasters, into books to hold my place.
I wondered if it were some code. I wanted it to be – I’d take all the messages from beyond the grave from him that I could get. I went from page to page carefully to see what they had in common.
JD, Mike, Georgie, Syd – there were nine of them in all, all of them bodyguards I’d run into more than once. Syd practically lived with us, much to Vincent’s chagrin – although I would admit to having been happy he was there that night with Philly the Chicken Man. Him offering to let me watch him beat Philly to death had seemed downright chivalrous at the time.
There were dollar amounts and deals underneath all of their names, crossmatched with other names. Were they…embezzling? Syd was in the tens of thousands of dollars – if they were aggregate, a gang within the family, like some sort of internal parasite – the family ought to know. I didn’t owe them any allegiance though – it was their war with the Carminos that’d gotten Vincent killed. Or was it? Anyone whose name was in this book had a reason to see Vincent dead.
I flipped through it again and again, and it was like he was there with me, just a little. I could hear his words in his voice and it was like he was holding my hand.
Comforted by him, I drifted off to sleep.
#
There was a knock at the door and I winced. This time of night, it had to be Ray – even the most desperate of men were usually asleep by five in the morning.
“Go away,” Jesse muttered, flinging an arm out.
Good. Let her get in trouble, not me. I huddled underneath the covers. If he was just looking for someone to hit on, he’d start in on whoever was nearest the door.
The knock was louder now – and it didn’t stop. It wasn’t like the door was locked – Ray knew that. I’d say it was a mind game, only Ray didn’t have a mind, just brute strength and the will to use it.
“Said go away!” Jesse muttered, twice as loud.
“Hey --” a voice on the far side asked. Jesse sat up – so did Rae and Karen and I. The cops?
Cops didn’t knock – they kicked. No matter – Karen had the window open and was already throwing her belongings into the alley.
The voice had sounded like – it couldn’t be -- “Sammy – are you in there?”
I blinked. “Vincent?” I said, too quiet for him to hear me.
The door opened, right into Jesse’s mattress – our private security alarm and barricade. She screamed in terror, and I heard him sigh.
I hopped out of my bed – I was still on the top bunk, the right of a ‘top earner’ according to Ray, but I wouldn’t hold my place long – not without Vincent as a ‘client’ anymore. He hadn’t told me why he’d stopped seeing me, and why the hotel room was up, but I thought I knew why. I mean, there were no guarantees with us, right? I’d never asked for any – there was no point. My choices had been to get my heart broken then-now, or now-later. I’d gone with later and –
“Sammy, are you in there?”
“Vincent?” I asked again, louder.
“Thank God –“ there was relief in his voice, and he shoved the door harder.
I went to the door’s edge to help him, stepping over a glaring Jessica, feeling silly in just a t-shirt and underwear. “What’re you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he said with a grin, shoving a bag through the door to me. “Get your things.”
I took the bag, staring at him. “Why?”
“Because I’ve come to take you home.”
I stood there, blinking. “What?”
“Get your things.”
Had I heard him right?
He leaned against the door, making as much space for himself as he could. “Come on -- let’s go.”
“But –“ I looked down at the empty bag and then back to him.
“I know this isn’t like the movies – and I’m sorry that I didn’t catch you all having a pillow fight or something – but come on,” he said beckoning me with a hand. “Ray’s not going to stay down forever, and I’d like to go to sleep still tonight -- after fucking you senseless.”
He grinned recklessly at me and the part of me I’d been trying to deny for months, that this past week had shattered, was reborn and soared. I tossed his bag back to him – mine was already packed. I got it and wedged it and myself out into the hallway. His hand found mine and he started pulling me along.
“But what happened?”
“He wanted to charge more –“ Vincent said, as we reached the living room of our cramped apartment. Ray was slumped on the floor, with a bruise the size of Vincent’s fist against his jaw. “It was never you, Samantha –“ he said, reaching over to grab my hips and pick me up over Ray’s comatose form. “He’s surprisingly well connected. It took me a week to get permission to beat the shit out of him for overcharging – and as for taking you – I didn’t ask.”
I snorted, looking around at the small room – it was shitty, but familiar, with its faded couch and ashtrays piled high with cigarettes. Outside the open door however, was unknown.
“So what now?”
“Now – you’ll come and be with me.”
“At a hotel?” I guessed, suddenly feeling my lack of pants and bra.
“No. At my place. If you want to go. I – assumed –“ he said, and looked at Ray. “You’re not trading him for me, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Then what are you offering?” I asked, because I desperately wanted to hear him say it.
“Move in with me. Be with me. All the time. I want to know what you’re thinking in the middle of the night. I want to open my heart to you. No secrets between us. Can you h
andle that?”
“I can!” shouted someone from the other room, and then there was snickering, and I was laughing and crying at the same time and Vincent was looking pleased and I leapt into his arms.
“I can too,” I said, and he grabbed my hand and pulled me out the door and into his car. I got into the passenger side and he got into the driver side and as he drove away I honked the horn to let everyone back there know what’d happened, to say good-bye to that place and everyone in it, to let the neighbors know, the street know, the sky know, that I was finally free.
#
I sat up in bed in the cabin’s darkness, the sound of a honking horn still echoing in my mind. Vincent’s? It’d sounded so real --
Another longer honk that wasn’t ending. It sounded like something had fallen against the steering wheel and it didn’t stop. Oh no –
I put on my shoes, the last thing Max hadn’t burned, and grabbed a flashlight. I walked back behind the cabin, the flashlight’s beam spotting me, and saw Max’s truck parked below.
“Max?” I called out. No one answered.
I got down the ridge as fast as I could, almost taking the last third of it on my ass, as rocks skittered out from underneath me. I reached the driver side door and opened it up. He was slouched over – I used two hands to push him back.
What the hell had happened to him? He was covered in blood, in bruises, things that looked like bite marks criss-crossed his arms.
“Oh God, oh God –“ I leaned in and tried to feel for a pulse in the sticky red beneath his jaw. My finger pushed into a hole and I screamed without thinking, like a girl in a horror film. His head fluttered at the sound.
“You’re alive?” I whispered. He’d made it here somehow, barely. Shit.
I watched his chest until I saw him take a breath – and heard half of it whistle out the hole in his trachea.
“Shit-shit-shit.”
911 was not an option, I didn’t have a phone, and I didn’t know how to tell them where we were if I did. It was up to me or God at this point, and I didn’t give either of us very good odds.
“It’s going to be okay, baby,” I said, stroking his bloody hair out of his face. If he was going to die, I didn’t want him to think he was alone. He’d gone out there looking for answers and they’d done this to him. Who knew what they would have done to me in his stead. “This is where you belong, okay? You’re home, baby. You’re home. Just stay here.”
I took the flashlight back up the ridge with me and into the cabin, and pulled out everything soft I could think of, piles of sweaters and coats from his closet, and pulled the sheets off of the bed. Then I threw or dragged them down the ridge with me, so that I could make some sort of pallet for him on the ground.
“Come on. Let’s get you out of there,” I said, the flashlight pinched under one arm, watching for his chest to rise and fall. I pulled on his arm and prayed that it wouldn’t fall off, holding tighter against the slickness of so much blood. He collapsed out of the truck and almost onto me, as I tried to direct him to the pile of moth eaten sweaters.
“Okay.” I talked for my sake, not his, and was glad for the darkness, because if I could only see what the flashlight was showing me, I didn’t know about the rest at that time. I could look at an arm without thinking of how his leg looked ruined, or his legs without thinking about that gaping hole in his neck. I tore sheets into strips of bandages and tied off wounds that I thought were still seeping, knowing the whole time that nothing I did was going to work, there weren’t enough sheets in the world to keep his blood inside him.
I didn’t see his eyes open, but I heard him whisper my name. “Sam.”
I moved up his body with the flashlight and blinded us both. I dropped to kneeling by his bloody head, where it looked like someone had tried to peel his scalp off with a can opener. His eyes closed against the brightness of the light, and didn’t open again. “Max – it’s Sammy. I’m here.” I looked for some part of him that I could squeeze to let him know that I was all right, thanks to him. And that I’d watch over him until this was over. He wouldn’t be alone when he died, not like my Vincent had been. “I never should have lied to you, okay? I didn’t mean to. You know how it is, for people like us. You assume you have to until you’re so used to it you don’t even question it anymore, you know?” I leaned over him, blotting at him with a wad of already blood-saturated cloth. “But its Sammy, I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
I took his hand in mine and turned the flashlight off since it wasn’t doing either of us any good. I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of all the crickets and the whistling at his neck.
Adrenaline kept me up for what felt like an hour. I had no concept of time with only the stars slowly spinning overhead and the crossing moon. The whistling sound beside me lessened, fading gently like a train running off into the night. Max was going away and there was nothing I could do. I let go of his hand and stayed with him. I didn’t want any bears or mountain lions dragging him off in the night.
I’m ashamed to say that somehow without meaning to I slept.
I woke up alone and covered in blood.
“Oh. My. God.” The nest I’d made was as covered in it as I was. Somehow a bear had to have gotten past me and taken him and dragged him off into the forest to eat. How the fuck had I slept through that? I stood, looking down at myself in horror. How was I going to bury him? I’d hear the sound of his neck whistling until the end of my days – I spun in the woods, looking in all directions, stunned and horrified, before clambering back up the ridge to the cabin.
I had to get my head on straight. Make a list. Do one thing at a time. Clean up. Get the book. Get out of here.
But I’d as good as sent him to his death, telling him we needed our revenge. What the fuck had I been thinking, saying things like that to a man like him? The life Vincent lead had always had an expiration date, but Max had been out of things until I’d pulled him back. Oh God, oh God, oh God – no wonder Vincent had turned, if being responsible for other people’s lives had felt like this.
I fell to my knees at the top of the ridge, nauseous and out of breath – and I saw a rock clearly smeared with blood.
I got my feet under myself again, and saw a trail of it, leading to the cabin’s porch. I ran for its open door.
He was laying on the floor, sprawled out. Enough daylight filtered through the dirty windows that I could see the dried smears of blood – and his chest rise and fall.
“Max?” I ran over to where he was, looking down. How had he – he wasn’t whistling anymore – his neck – the torn muscles of his arm that I knew I’d felt last night while squeezing on him to pull – I took all of him in, my mind whirling, trying to figure out what’d happened again and again, always coming up blank.
He was here now and he needed help. I latched onto that, and bent over to blow on the stove’s fire and add more kindling, then ran with the kettle to the creek.
Maybe he’d just had some really shitty wounds that’d bled a lot, like when you were a kid and you scraped your knee -- it looked bad, but it wasn’t bad, you know? I could almost convince myself of that, that the wounds I’d seen on him last night were part of an awful dream, but then seeing him again – covered in blood, even if he wasn’t still actively bleeding -- I was no stranger to violence, and I wasn’t dumb. I put the kettle on the stove and tore a shirt of his into washcloth portions and started to scrub him clean.
There were still wounds underneath his assorted scabs. Whatever had attacked him – it’d tried to tear him open. Like with teeth. Some of the family had fighting dogs – had they thrown him into a pit to take his chances? But the jaw span – there were divots on his arm that I could put my hand inside. A dog with a jaw wider than my palm – my God.
I reached the end of what I could do for his torso and his face, and he still hadn’t stirred. I bent down and tugged his shoes off and wriggled him out of his pants, and then folded them over his hips like a loincloth for p
ropriety’s sake as I finished washing the rest of him. He seemed to be sleeping more easily now – and wounds that I’d washed once looked better when I looked at them again.
Only I knew it wasn’t my makeshift washcloth doing that.
I stared at a laceration on the inside of his upper arm, one of the many bites he’d received. I’d just shoved the meat of it back where it’d belonged, a wedge of muscle and skin the size of a silver dollar – and it was knitting back together, slowly. There were scars, but the wounds themselves were closing like they’d never been there at all. I leaned forward, determined to watch him healing in slow-motion like he was a science experiment.
My necklace swung forward as I did, free from my sweater after all my tossing and turning last night, and it landed on his chest. A second later I heard a sizzling sound and saw black streaks trailing away from it. The locket itself was teetering, as blisters began beneath. He whined in his sleep, shuddering it away just as I snatched it back up – it’d left a perfectly burned oval on him, a charred black spot over his heart.
I looked from the locket – unharmed – to him, with a scar the size of a thumbprint.
Whatever Max was…wasn’t normal. But it didn’t change what he’d done, did it? He’d risked himself, for me – for Vincent. I concentrated on that and finished washing him up, with my locket hidden inside my sweater again.
Two hours later, all of his lacerations looked closed. I’d washed most of the blood off. I set the washrag aside and tried shaking his shoulders.
“Max. Max – wake up.”
His body lolled with the motions, but didn’t move.
“Come on, Max. You’re healed now, right?” I wondered if his mind was hurt in the fight, and if his body could also heal that -- but he’d driven here, so he couldn’t have been that bad off. “Max – hey –“ I put one thumb on an eye-lid and pulled up. The eye underneath wasn’t blue – it was golden. I gasped.
Before I could pull my hand away he moved faster than I could even see and bit me. Not hard, not yet – but human teeth held onto the side of my hand, and when I tried to pull away they bit harder.
The Hunted (Sleeping With Monsters Book 2) Page 10
