“You bastard. How could you do that in front of everyone? How? That’s what you call protecting me?”
“You’re right. I wasn’t protecting you. I was protecting Timmy, because if he continued to touch you, I was going to kill him. If you don’t like the way things are, then I’m not sure what to tell you, because I. Will. Kill. Him.”
The blood was pounding in my ears so loudly that I wasn’t sure I’d hear him if he said anything else. What was this? What was he saying?
“I can’t do this,” he said.
Did he just agree with me? No. He didn’t look like he was agreeing. Not at all. He still looked pissed. I was afraid to ask but couldn’t not. “Can’t do what?”
“Leave you alone. I don’t know what to do with you.” He was talking as if he were angry, that I’d done this to him somehow.
He didn’t? If he’d wanted to stump me, that had done it. I was still in stunned silence when he continued.
“I can’t kiss you or sleep with you or ‘use’ you, as you put it. I don’t steal kisses in a closet or behind a tree. That’s not how I work. It won’t be on your terms. If you give yourself to me, you give yourself to me—you’re mine. That’s how it works.”
I might’ve stayed in a haze if that didn’t have one huge gap. “Are you saying you’re a virgin, then? Because here you are, single, alone? Clearly that’s not how it works.”
“It is with you,” he said, and then his hands were in my hair, pulling my head back, and his mouth was covering mine. He was pressing me against the wall, tilting my head so his tongue could dip deeper.
My hands went from pushing against his chest to gripping his shirt. I twisted my head to the side, my breathing ragged.
His muscles tensed underneath my fisted hands.
He pulled back, his hands still in my hair. “You still want this?”
I knew what he was asking, and it wasn’t if I still wanted to sleep with him. That would’ve been an easy yes. He wanted me. I wanted him.
But committing to him? Saying I’d stay until who knew when? Maybe forever? Could I stay with him forever? Would he be forced to move around with me? Would I want him to? Could I willingly tie myself to anyone at this point? The idea felt like iron bars slamming down all around me. It sucked the oxygen from my lungs.
I turned my head to the side, needing a minute, needing space.
“That’s what I thought.” He stepped back.
My hands fell from him. The space between us grew into a chasm as I walked out.
Twenty-Eight
Callon was on the far side of the lodge’s land the next morning, right where the ground dropped off and the stream turned into a small waterfall.
After last night, seeing him was going to be tough, but there were other things that needed to happen. I couldn’t put life on hold because of a kiss, and a scene in front of a lot of people, no matter how much I wanted to. Things were spinning out of control in every direction, and time was slipping by quicker than whiskey in a drunk’s hands. There were hard choices to be made. I needed as many answers as I could get before I made them. When I left here, I needed to know without a shadow of a doubt it was the only option.
That meant I had to go back to the village and question Turrock, and I’d need Callon for that. If that made me weak, then so be it. There were certain hurdles I wasn’t ready to jump alone—not yet, anyway. I’d be jumping them on my own soon enough.
I stopped on the bank six feet above him. “Hey.”
He’d probably heard me approaching about a mile back. “Hey,” he said, barely breaking his stare from the creek and dirt to glance at me. I didn’t know if the terrain was that interesting or the idea of looking at me was that distasteful.
How could I know his feelings when I couldn’t decide upon mine? I was bouncing between elated that he wanted me and mad because nothing was simple with him. He couldn’t only take what I was willing to give. In typical Callon fashion, he had to have it all. Sex wasn’t good enough. I needed to give him all of me. I didn’t have all of me to give anymore. Maybe if I’d lived a different life, had a different past, we would’ve been different. But that future had died at least a decade before at Baryn’s hands.
“What are you doing?” I asked, looking for some way to bridge the gaping chasm between us. I crossed my arms as he took longer than normal to answer.
“The Hell Pit is moving steadily closer. I’m surveying the land for our final stand.” His voice was distant. His eyes were colder. He was shutting me out. I hadn’t realized until now that I’d been in.
I looked for the best way down, trying to find a perch on a root. Callon fixed the issue for me when he reached up and lifted me off the side of the small cliff. His hands didn’t linger. He touched me as little as possible to get the job done and that was that.
I’d told him last night not to touch me anymore, and I was already wishing I could rewind the clock.
I made a little circle about the area. “This is it, I guess?”
He nodded. “The stuff flows uphill, but it does seem to slow it down a little. If we do have to leave, this might be the last thing in between us and it. I want to trench out around it and maybe buy a little more time.”
He stopped talking and walked a good ten feet away to look at a different spot that was conveniently farther away from me.
I kicked the rocks by my feet as I said, “When this is over, it might be best if I find somewhere else to go—that is, if we can break the spell binding us.” I feared his reply the way some feared the return of the plague. I wasn’t sure why I was telling him this. I didn’t need to anymore. I could simply leave.
He finally looked at me for more than a passing second. “If that’s what you want, I’ll help you get settled. I have connections with a lot of different communities and villages. They aren’t all bad.”
As soon as he said those words, I knew exactly why I’d told him. I’d wanted him to fight for me. Because if there was any chance that I could have a normal life with someone, that person would have to be all in, every ounce of him willing to battle it out, because it wasn’t going to be easy. I was fucked up and broken and knew it. He knew it too, and he was ready to throw in the towel.
He might’ve been relieved that I was taking the initiative. I couldn’t blame him. No one should have to get stuck with someone as fucked up as me.
There was only one move left to make, one possibility for answers. If I was going to leave here, it would be better if I could find a way to stop the Hell Pits from destroying whatever life I could make. There was only one place left to go.
“I need to go back to my old village.”
The hard edge softened. “Why would you want to go back there?”
Just because you know a tough conversation is coming, that doesn’t make it any easier to have. I’d witnessed enough of them to know.
Someone might as well have tied my tongue into a knot for how useful it was. I leaned on the nearest tree, my brain needing every ounce of energy available to explain. Plus my spine seemed to have disappeared at the thought of returning there.
“There are a couple of reasons. I was talking to Tuesday, and she made a good point. There might be a reason in my past that’s drawing these things to me, and there are people at the village that might know more about where I come from.”
He’d walked closer to me. “You said a couple reasons. What else? Is this about Dal and Dax?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind ruling them out, but that’s not it.”
He didn’t say much as he watched me, and I started to fidget. Didn’t he realize how hard this was?
He leaned on a nearby tree of his own as he waited.
“I don’t know who exactly I used to be. I don’t know who I am now, either, not really. I can’t seem to decide if I’m a victim or a survivor. I want to know deep down what I’m made of, and part of that might be facing the place I don’t want to go and tell the people there that they can’t hurt me anym
ore. They have no power.”
“You don’t get it. It doesn’t matter what those people think or know.”
“But I still need to go. They might have answers.”
He looked off into the horizon, not answering.
“What is it? Why don’t you like my plan?”
It was another few minutes before he turned back to me, the sun setting casting a glow on his skin. When his eyes met mine, I saw that flare of red. Something had put him on edge, and it must have been me.
He let out a long, slow breath and then said, “Because for the first time in weeks, you’re reminding me of the first night I met you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He took a couple more steps away from me. “Nothing. When do you want to leave?”
“Tomorrow morning, if we can. I want to get this lousy shit over with.”
He let out a soft laugh. “Spoken like a true survivor.”
Twenty-Nine
We’d been traveling for two days and nothing was going well. Callon no longer slept next to me. Even around camp, when we settled in for the night, Callon kept his distance and his words to a minimum. This put Zink in a chipper mood. Zink’s happiness made my mood even fouler. I shared a tent with Tuesday, who would rather be sleeping next to Koz, so they were both unhappy as well.
If that weren’t enough, Tuesday was barely eating, and this time it wasn’t a show for Koz. The green hue of her skin was the biggest tipoff that she couldn’t stomach anything. She’d been getting worse each meal since we’d left, and tonight was no exception.
We were almost back to the village, and in spite of insisting on coming, everything about her screamed that she wasn’t ready to walk back in there.
I made my way over to the fire and sat beside her on the log. Koz was eyeing me up as I did, probably hoping that I could fix her. Even Hess seemed to be interested in the outcome. I was going to nudge her in the right direction, but there was only one fix: her not going.
I leaned in until my shoulder was bumping hers. “You don’t have to come. You can wait behind.”
“I’m going. I have to.” She wrapped her arms tighter about herself as the cold sank into her unfueled body.
Or maybe it was just freezing out. I leaned closer to the fire, holding out my hands. “I have to go. You don’t.”
“We’re sisters. We do these things together. I go where you go.”
“Maybe this time you stay near where I go? What do you think?”
She laughed. That was a start.
It faded quickly.
“It was my idea,” she said.
That was when I knew I had her. She needed a little cajoling, maybe, a couple of solid excuses to hang her hat on, but she was cracking.
“I know that you say that place wasn’t the same hell for you that it was for me, but we’re still talking about hell. Being on an upper tier of hell doesn’t mean it wasn’t still God-awful.”
Tuesday shuddered beside me. It might have been the memories this time. Couldn’t be sure, but I was wearing her down. Now I had to finish this off, even though I didn’t want to. In truth, I wanted her with me, but not like this.
I leaned back again, making sure she really heard me. “You’re missing one thing. When I go in this time, I know I can kill anything that comes near me. That’s an awful big safety net to carry around, and one you don’t have.”
Koz cleared his throat from across the way, as if he’d swallowed a bug.
I knew what bug it was too. “I’m not saying you wouldn’t protect her. If I didn’t believe you would, I wouldn’t like you so much. But it’s still different.”
Koz gave me a shrug. It was the only admission of being right I was going to get, but that was okay.
Koz’s gaze moved back to Tuesday and softened. His lips turned up slightly as his eyes heated. “Just as long as we’re clear I’ll always have her back, we’re good.”
If she didn’t know he loved her after that, she was deaf and blind.
I glanced to my side and saw Tuesday staring at him like the sun didn’t need to rise in the morning because Koz walked the Earth. I got it. She liked him. Strike that. Loved him. Still, this amount of worship might’ve been overkill. You shouldn’t worship any person. All it did was raise them up and give you a crick in your neck. Eventually they’d tumble down, possibly falling right on top of you. And it was inevitable that they fell, because that was what humans did, even the beast variety. I’d rather walk beside a person. If they leaned a little, it was easier to support them when you were on the same level and by their side.
“Look, if I couldn’t do what I do, I’d never go back there,” I said, trying to move back to the subject at hand before she left to go pray to Koz.
“Really?” she asked.
“Really.”
Callon stood slightly in the shadows, out of Tuesday’s view. Right now he was giving me a look that said I was full of shit. He was right. I hadn’t used my gift in months. I didn’t know if I could still do it, but I was going back either way.
But I didn’t need Callon to believe me. I only needed Tuesday to buy the story, and she wanted to. That was half the struggle. She’d believe it because she wanted to.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“I’m positive. Honestly, it might work out even better if you wait outside the village. Stay back with Koz and you’ll be able to identify who’s coming and going; Koz can’t. Callon mentioned something like that already.” I turned to Callon, and so help him if he didn’t back me up. He could ignore me all day if he wanted, but he better say the right thing now. “Isn’t that right?”
“Said it to Koz earlier today,” he answered.
She nodded. “Okay, I can do that.”
Koz looked at me as if I’d been deemed the newest deity in the group. Callon glanced my way, but spared me any such revealing emotions of adoration, before he walked off into the woods.
A few minutes later, Tuesday disappeared into our tent with Koz. Hess retired next, and Zink followed him just so he wouldn’t have to be stuck alone with me. I wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight, so it didn’t matter much to me where I sat.
About an hour later, I was throwing another log on the fire when Callon returned. I didn’t bother looking at his eyes. It didn’t matter anymore. He walked over but kept a buffer of a few feet between us. I’d noticed he’d been leaving that same amount of space ever since the night of the roast.
“You should try to get some sleep,” he said, more a matter of fact than overflowing concern.
“Tent’s occupied.” It was an excuse, but it was also true.
“You can take mine. I’ll sleep outside.”
For a split second, I’d thought he was going to sleep beside me. I hadn’t realized how fast relief and happiness could spike inside, or how fast they’d fall when you realized you were wrong.
“I’m fine here.” A week ago, he would’ve picked me up and dragged me in there with him anyway. Tonight, he stood next to me as if he didn’t care at all.
I was so pathetic that I was happy he hadn’t gone into his tent yet, even if we both remained silent.
Thirty
We left Koz and Tuesday hidden in the forest behind us as we walked toward the village. Callon was on my right, Hess on my left, and Zink covering my back. I’d never appreciated Zink’s cold edge quite as much as I did now. He might try to kill me himself next week, but the battle lines for today had been drawn, and I was on the right side of it at the moment.
Callon hadn’t tried to talk to me before we’d arrived. He didn’t try to take my hand and make everything better, and I wasn’t delusional enough to think things had changed. But when we paused in front of that rusted metal door, and I took in a few long, shuddering breaths, pulling myself together, the back of his hand grazed mine. I turned to him, and his look told me everything I needed to know. We’d fight and bleed and kill as one. We’d walk out of here together, even if we didn’t tal
k while we did it.
A metal window slid open and a guard’s face appeared. “Who are you and why are you here?”
I couldn’t see the face and didn’t recognize the voice.
“Tell Turrock that Teddy is here to see him.” I squared my shoulders like there was a rod in them and stood like I had steel for bones.
Even from where we stood, I could hear raised voices, but I couldn’t make out the words.
“They’re fighting over whether it’s really you,” Callon said, his voice barely above a growl.
There must’ve been a little more flavor to it, because his eyes were flaring red.
“Your beast is showing,” I said. I didn’t care if the beast made a full-fledged appearance, but not until after they opened the gates and gave me answers. Then he could go all savage and rip them apart with my blessing. If he turned now, we’d never get Turrock to talk.
The gate, rusted and patched, began to grind open. The sound alone sent chills through me. How many times had I heard that sound, wondering if I’d ever escape? If I’d die in that hell? And here I was, willingly walking back into it. My heart pounded, stealing the blood from the rest of my body, leaving my face white and my hands cold and clammy.
My pack edged in closer. I could do this, even if I had to kill every motherfucker in there. I could do it.
Callon’s arm brushed mine as we walked toward hell.
The gate groaned its way open far enough to reveal a man standing in the opening. He was a giant, or as close to one as I’d ever seen, with his hair of bright red and a flowing beard. Ivan. I knew him well. Too well. He’d done Baryn’s dirty work many times. The night I escaped, he’d been the last person to drag me out to the pole and chain me there.
Blood came pounding back into my veins with a vengeance. My bones filled with iron as rage flooded every cell in my body. I walked forward. I wouldn’t leave this place without this man dying, and by my hand.
Ten more of Baryn’s thugs idled behind him. No, they were Turrock’s thugs now. I marched forward, the guys keeping pace.
Savage One: Born Wild Book Two Page 18
