Rapture fa-4

by J. R. Ward

As she went loose into thin air, she threw her arms out and found nothing that could help her regain her balance….

  Splash!

  Hitting the water was a shock. Cold and grasping, the river seemed to dig into her, sucking her in and holding her down. Opening her mouth, she was flooded with a nasty taste as she tried to claw her way back to the surface.

  She got nowhere, sure as if a Hawaii-style riptide had set up shop in the Hudson.

  Closing her lips so she didn’t take any more water in, she felt the burn in her chest quickly become a screaming heat, and panic gave her a burst of energy. Thrashing against the black void, she fought with that newfound power—putting everything she had into saving her own life.

  She got nowhere.

  Arms and legs slowed down.

  Heart rate sped up.

  The fire in her lungs became volcanic.

  After an eternity, the dull roar in her ears receded, and so did the cold of the Hudson, and the pain in her chest. Or maybe it was more that all that was still going on—she was just starting to lose consciousness.

  How was this happening?

  How the hell was this happening?

  Dimly, she readied herself for the whole life-before-the-eyes thing, getting good and braced for a list of regrets, for the faces of the people she would miss most—of which Matthias’s would definitely be one…

  Instead, she just felt more suffocation and a sense that, aw, crap, this was how it ended?

  As a last thought, it was pretty uninspiring….

  * * *

  Following the tracking spell he’d put on that reporter, Jim showed up at what appeared to be some kind of boat club facility down at the Hudson River’s edge. Overhead, the sky was so choked with clouds that it could have been after midnight instead of afternoon, but that wasn’t the doom-and-gloom he was worried about.

  The instant he got within range, Devina’s presence was a scream that ran up the nape of his neck—

  And then the reporter’s signal disappeared.

  Bursting in through the open door, he stopped dead as he saw Devina standing by herself, stilettos planted on the planks of the docking platforms.

  “Surprise, surprise,” she said, kicking up her chin and moving her hair over her shoulder.

  For a split second, he nearly launched himself at the demon. He just wanted his hands around her throat, squeezing as she fought against him, squeezing until he snapped her head clean off her goddamn spine.

  But the reporter was the reason he’d come.

  Searching the place, he found…nothing. No one. Just waves clapping under the cribs, the restless water chatting all around.

  “Where is she?” he demanded.

  “Where is who?”

  In the water, he thought.

  Jim jumped forward and shoved the demon out of the way, hoping she landed on her bony ass as he started looking in all the empty slips. Man, the river was murky, the lack of light making it seem opaque.

  “What are you looking for,” he heard Devina say.

  Stalking around, he got nothing but churning current—and wasn’t fooled. The demon had come here for a purpose…and was staying for one, too. “I want you to leave. Right now.”

  “It’s a free world.”

  “Only if you lose.”

  Devina laughed. “Not the way I see it—”

  He shot over to his enemy and got nose-to-nose with her. “Leave. Or I’ll destroy you right here and now.”

  A nasty glint came into her eye. “You can’t talk to me like that—”

  Before he knew it, one of his hands locked on her throat, his little fantasy coming true as he began to channel energy into the hold—

  From out of nowhere, a light source entered the boathouse—no, wait, it was him. He was glowing.

  Fine, whatever. He was so angry he could have gone disco-ball, for all he cared—especially as his other palm joined the party. And for a moment, Devina just laughed at him again, except then something changed. She started to struggle to breathe, her fingernails coming up to try to peel his grip from her neck at first with anger; then with something close to fear.

  As that glow he was giving off spread throughout his body, it grew stronger, until it started to throw shadows—and he kept squeezing, pushing her back until she was trapped against the rowboats that had been stacked up on risers, shoving his body against hers to hold her in place. He was shaking with power from head to foot, and somehow he knew he was turning her on—which was not the case with his arousal. Yeah, he was hard, but what part of him wasn’t? Every muscle was clenched, from his jaw to his thighs, his shoulders to his ass.

  He was going to fucking do it.

  Right here, right now. Fuck Nigel and those English pricks who were in charge of him. Fuck the game, the war, the conflict—whatever you wanted to call it. Fuck it all—

  Something exploded behind him, displaced water hitting his legs.

  And then there was a great, dragging gasp for air, followed by hacking coughs.

  Jim broke his concentration for a split second to see what it was—and that was all Devina needed. The demon ethered out of his hold, coalescing into a black scatter of molecules with a screech, and then firing herself at him.

  The impact was like ten thousand bee stings across every inch of skin he had, and he yelled, not out of pain but frustration, as he went down in a heap.

  Devina didn’t counterattack but moved on, casting herself into the sky she’d darkened, becoming one with the evil clouds above.

  Gone, gone, gone…for now.

  From his vantage point of cheek-on-plank, he watched her go with a curse through his gaping mouth…and then focused on the reporter saving herself.

  Over at the closest slip, a pair of arms shot up out of the water, pale hands latching onto the decking, nails penetrating the wood. And then with a great heave, the woman drew her wet, cold self out of the river’s depth.

  She ended up flopped next to him, the pair of them not moving as they recovered.

  “We…have…to…” she coughed, “stop meeting…like this.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Off in the distance, someone was talking. Jim’s roommate.

  Matthias couldn’t focus on the sounds, however, his neuropathways jammed with all those profiles, Internet addresses and codes—all the way back to his first e–mail addy and the sequence of the bicycle lock he’d used in grade school…and Jim Heron’s dossier.

  “Matthias—talk to me. What’s doing.” Not a question. A demand—and he wanted to follow it. He and the roommate had developed a kind of working relationship, what with those black things, and now the whole dead-body/car problem, so he felt compelled to comment.

  Except he couldn’t talk.

  Something gripped his ass—no, wait, that was the ground or a seat. He’d been made to sit down. Blinking his eyes, he tried to see through the video game that was playing in front of him, but he got nowhere.

  “Matthias, buddy—you gotta talk to me.”

  With a shaky hand, he rubbed his eyes. That helped. When he opened up again, he could see Adrian’s piercings up close and personal.

  “Hey, you back?” the guy asked.

  After a while, Matthias muttered, “Why did you do that?”

  “I didn’t do shit to you—”

  He waved his hand around that fierce puss. “With the piercings. I mean, really. Do you think you need to look like more of a hard-ass?”

  There was a heartbeat and then the big bastard laughed. “She was hot. The more I got, the more time I got to spend with her.”

  “The piercer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So it was a chick thing?”

  Adrian shrugged. “The pain made the sex better.”

  “Ah.”

  At that, Matthias looked away. Strange. Before PLMD—or Poor Land Mine Decision—sex had been like eating and breathing, something he just did. Now…the loss of that part of himself seemed to take on epic proport
ions.

  Then again, if he was honest, that was more about Mels. If he hadn’t met her, he wouldn’t have cared. Hadn’t cared, actually, over these last couple of years of halt-and-lame.

  “So did you stroke out on me?” the roommate asked.

  “Just things coming back.” Not a fun ride, but if he kept this up, he might actually remember why he had this need to get down to Manhattan.

  “But you’re all right.”

  The fact that he didn’t get grilled about the particulars—which he wouldn’t have shared anyway—was a nice touch. “Yeah. Now back to the stiff.”

  When he went to stand up, his legs wouldn’t hold him, sure as if they were made of paper.

  “Let me get your cane and your sunglasses,” the guy said, heading out of the garage.

  Left to his own devices, Matthias was determined not to keep sitting next to the rear tire of the unmarked like something that had dropped off a mud flap. Reaching up, he planted a hand on the bumper, and with a groan, got himself vertical.

  Palming his way around, he leaned in through the driver’s-side door and popped the trunk.

  He was staring into the empty space when the roomate came back. Taking the cane, he put the Ray-Bans in place and shook his head. “There isn’t going to be anything on or in the car. We’re thorough like that.” He went around to stand over the body. “I say we put it all in the Hudson at nightfall.”

  Shit, he had dinner plans.

  “Make that midnight,” he amended as he shut the trunk. Then, “No, two a.m.”

  “You have something on tonight?”

  As the roommate hairy-eyeballed him, he clammed up; he wasn’t talking about Mels. Trouble was, though, he couldn’t assign this disposal to anybody else, mostly because he had to see the sedan sink into a watery grave with his own eyes: Until his memory was back in its entirety and he was on his way—whatever that meant—he couldn’t risk any third-party complications.

  Nothing like a dead body to get the CPD riled, and XOps? They claimed their men.

  Adrian stroked his square jaw. “What if I told you we could do it now.”

  “How.”

  “Trust me.”

  “Who do you think you are, Houdini?”

  “Nah. Don’t have a straitjacket big enough for this POS. But I do know where to go with it.”

  As Adrian stood there in neutral, his eyes were steady, his breathing calm, his vibe one of total confidence.

  Matthias didn’t give a shit about people’s words. But he was willing to bet on affect, which was oh so hard to fake.

  Unless, of course, the SOB was delusional.

  Matthias thought back to that fight in the woods—most guys who handled themselves like this one did were the product of years of training and experience in the business of mortal-stakes risk management.

  “So what’s your plan?” Matthias said.

  “Dump the damn thing now.”

  “In the river? It’s broad daylight.”

  “Won’t matter where I’m thinking of.”

  Matthias glanced over at the stiff and thought fondly of the way things bottomed out in water. “Let’s get him into the trunk.”

  Adrian went over to the body as Matthias hit the release and popped the rear compartment open again. Rigor mortis was in effect, which was good for carrying, not so hot for cramming something in a relatively tight space: Both of them had to throw muscle into getting those knees bent up and pretzeling the torso, the effort proving that a golf bag was so much easier to deal with—especially given that shit made by Callaway always came with handles.

  “I’ll drive,” Matthias said.

  “You like to be in control, don’t you.”

  “You’d better believe it.”

  The two of them piled in, and he hot-wired the engine again.

  K-turn. Out the drive. Past the farmhouse.

  “Where we doing this?” he asked.

  “Hang a left. We’re heading north.”

  They’d gone about five miles when the roommate looked over. “So you like that reporter, huh.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Liar.”

  “I have amnesia, you know.”

  “You like her.”

  Matthias glanced across the seat. “Please don’t tell me that you’re trying on a career change as a yenta?”

  “We’re going to be driving for a while. Just making conversation.”

  “Silence is a virtue.” There was a pause. “Besides, I don’t know why you’re interested.”

  “I fucked a chick last night.”

  Matthias’s brows went up behind Mels’s Ray-Bans. “Well, good for you. You want a cookie? Or a commemorative stamp?”

  “It was like…you know when you sneeze?”

  “Are you kidding me.”

  “I’m serious. When you sneeze, like, it’s a relief of an irritation.”

  Matthias gave the guy a long, hard one—as in stare. And then decided, yeah, he kinda knew what the bastard was talking about. “But that’s because you can afford to be blasé.”

  “You with that reporter got me thinking is all.”

  Don’t ask. Don’t ask— “Why.”

  “Take a left up here. Time to cut down to the river’s edge.”

  Matthias did as he was told, thinking it was probably a good thing that the conversation dried up.

  “Take a right here.”

  He hit the brakes and eyeballed the break in the tree line—and the sharp rise. “That’s a footpath.”

  “Unless you drive on it with a car. Then it’s a road.”

  Matthias eased the Taurus off the asphalt and onto the twin tire grooves carved out through the rugged undergrowth. Talk about taking your time. Between the puddle holes and the steep ascent and the occasional downed branch that was the size of a body, it was not a road less traveled, but a road no-traveled.

  Or should have been.

  And yet they made it to the end—which was a modest cliff, as it turned out. And twenty feet down? There was a whole lot of lake.

  As Matthias put the engine in park, he glanced over at the roomate. “This is perfect.”

  “Duh.”

  The water below looked like an offshoot of the river, a supplier that channeled the rainfall from the mountains to the Hudson when the level got high enough—which it was now, thanks to the spring rains. The site was also perfectly isolated—evergreen everything all over, with no houses, no other roads, no people.

  There was only one problem. “We don’t have a ride home. And I can’t walk that far—”

  Adrian pointed across the seats.

  In the trees, hidden just out of sight, was the Harley that the guy had used before.

  Matthias cranked his head back around. “When the hell did you have time to get your bike out here?”

  Jim’s roommate leaned in. “Considering what you and I fought this afternoon, are you really asking me to explain shit.”

  Matthias blinked, the rational part of his brain cramping up briefly—and then releasing. “Good point.”

  As Adrian got out and started to clear the way to the lip of the cliff, throwing big branches off to the side like they weighed no more than paper clips, Matthias put the sedan in reverse to give them a little bit of a runway; then he got busy finding a heavy rock and dragging it over to the open driver’s-side door. All they needed to do was put the weight on the accelerator, flip the engine into gear, and get the hell back.

  Adrian was going to have to do that part.

  “You humans always take the hard road,” the roommate muttered as he came over and got the gist.

  Matthias glanced across his shoulder. “Humans?”

  “Whatever.”

  Three minutes later, Adrian jumped out from behind the wheel as that sedan roared forward in a straight line, did a swan dive off the cliff, and plowed into the lake with a massive splash.

  Matthias went to the edge and watched the bubbles rise to the surface. “And
it’s deep enough.”

  The roar of an engine brought his head back around. Adrian had mounted up and was combat-booting that big-ass bike out from the tree cover.

  Not exactly the most discreet way of getting them away from the scene. But with his limp, he was hardly in a position to argue for quiet.

  As he mounted up behind the roommate, he knew there was a GPS on the sedan—so XOps was going to come and take that body out of the trunk at some point. But at least he was making them work for it. And as for the proximity to Jim’s? It wasn’t as if they didn’t know where the guy lived.

  Besides, Jim wasn’t the target.

  * * *

  As Mels lay on her back and stared at the boathouse’s rafters, she tried to get her bearings while water dripped off her hair and her clothes.

  Cold was the big one. Gratitude was the second. Third was a big WTF….

  Held under the water. Choking. On the verge of death. And then just before her strength left her completely, whatever had pulled her under released its hold: Her arms had suddenly found traction against the river, pulled her up to the surface, gotten her to the air.

  As she had broken free, coughing out the water in her throat, her vision had cleared, and from over the edge of the dock she’d dimly seen Jim Heron attacking someone in her defense—

  The swallows came back, flapping around and finding their nests, suggesting time was passing.

  “Are you okay?” Heron asked her on a mumble, as if he’d been hurt.

  Any answer she could have given him was drowned out by his starting to retch. Curling over onto his side, he pushed himself up on bowed arms as his stomach staged a full-on revolt.

  Okay, she might have just nearly drowned, but he looked like the one who needed medical intervention. Scrambling around, she prayed that her purse hadn’t gone for a swim as well—

  Thank God. It was over by where she’d felt that great push on her body, hiding among some PFDs.

  Mels meant to stand up and walk to it; she really did. But the vertical thing didn’t go well, and instead, she had to drag herself across the dock, fits of coughing still grinding her lungs, her head all fuzzy. Except she wasn’t about to give in to all that.

  They needed help.

  When she got to her purse, she cranked the thing open. Her cell was right in the proper pocket. So was her wallet. And so was her collapsible raincoat—which was going to come in handy in another few minutes when she changed out of her soaked clothes.