Eddie’s Prize (13 page)

Time to change the subject. Lisa said brightly, “So, you were alive back then. I mean, in the Times Before?”

“Yes, I’m about four years younger than you.”

Lisa closed her eyes. That meant he was twenty-four. Or she was seventy-eight. She pretended her shudder was because she was cold.

“I was working on my master’s in library science at Purdue when the nukes hit. Chicago was destroyed. Luckily I was far enough away to miss the worst of it. You could still get the news on TV for a couple weeks in some places, but the terrorists waged cyber warfare, and about everything that depended on computers crashed. And after the plagues started up, there was no one left to clean up the computer worms, and the newscasts and newspapers stopped going out.”

“Plagues.” Lisa shuddered. Had Eddie spoken of them the night before the Bride Fight? “What were the plagues like?”

Mr. Gray’s cup froze on its way to his lips. “You’ve heard of the Black Death in the Middle Ages? One-third of Europe dying in three or four years? Entire villages wiped out?”

Vaguely. History hadn’t been her favorite subject in school, but she nodded.

“The Woman Killer Plague packs a one-two punch.” Lisa was reminded of Eddie’s voice taking on the tone of a schoolteacher the night before the Bride Fight. She recognized now he had been imitating Mr. Gray. “First it attacks the respiratory system. One survivor told me it starts out like the flu. In the first few hours the sufferer will have a headache, muscle aches, fever. Within twelve to twenty-four hours, the fever spikes to dangerous levels. Many die, but some recover. Those who survive Phase One, but don’t recover, go into Phase Two, which is almost always fatal. The virus evolves to attack the smooth muscles in the body, like the bronchi, the esophagus, the stomach, and the uterus. Within only a day or two, the victim dies.”

Lisa put her mug down to wrap her arms around herself. “Oh, my God.” She wasn’t sure if the cool, clinical recital of facts was easier to hear than an impassioned speech or not. “How many died?”

“Who can say for sure? Without long distance communications to verify numbers, I can only guess. But when Kylie and I came to Kearney in 2017, there was a population of less than nine hundred actually living in Kearney, and fewer than one hundred of those were women. In the Times Before, the population of Kearney was around 34,000.” He shrugged. “Do the math.”

Math hadn’t been her favorite subject either, but she didn’t need to be a mathematical genius to know the majority of Kearney hadn’t survived. “Thank God I missed all that.”

Mr. Gray nodded. “If you’d been in California, you would have died. In January of 2015, an earthquake broke most of California off, and it sank into the ocean. We didn’t hear about it for almost a year. News travels slowly these days, but it does travel. When Texas was hit by the asteroid a couple years later, we felt it, but we didn’t know what it was until the traders came through a few months later. A million acres of farm land were destroyed by the asteroid’s fires. If you talk to the folks from Odessa, you’ll find out they think it’s God’s judgment, like Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Plagues. Earthquakes. Asteroids. How many shocks could one woman take? Lisa took deep breaths to control her tears. “Minnesota? Please tell me Minnesota is okay.”

“As far as I know, there were no natural disasters in Minnesota. I heard southern Minnesota was hit hard by the Woman Killer Plague a couple years ago.”

“It’s still around?”

Her voice must have shown her horror, because Mr. Gray patted her arm again. “Sure, we have outbreaks every decade or so, but not like fifty years ago. And we can handle it now. As soon as we get word a case has been confirmed anywhere in the area, all the women are put into quarantine. We don’t risk our women.”

Great. Lisa didn’t want to have to go into quarantine, but the plague sounded like a horrible way to die. Mr. Gray rambled on, talking about his life before and after 2014, of his students, and the public reading of Tom Sawyer he had given last summer, and Lisa listened politely. Reading the classics out loud must count as exciting entertainment nowadays.

She was relieved when Eddie returned, but his face was the cold face of a stranger when he thanked Mr. Gray for babysitting her and told her to follow him. “Eddie—”

“Don’t speak to me right now,” he said curtly. “Follow me.”

Lisa was intimidated, but gripped her hands to still their shaking. “Eddie, I’m not your dog. We need to talk.”

He turned on her with a snarl. “Not now. Just follow me, or I’ll drag you.”

“Fine. Lead on.” That probably came out a little too sarcastic. Too bad. How could this arctic stranger be the same man whose tongue had pushed her to orgasm this morning? She waved a weak good-bye to Mr. Gray and walked behind Eddie all the way back home. A few hours ago they had walked this way hand in hand. Now she was trailing him like his slave, and her anger grew with every step, nearly drowning the fear. In the cruelly competitive world of modeling, Lisa Anton had been known for her good manners, generosity, and general niceness. She was fast losing all three right now. When they got home, she was going to lay down some rules for Eddie to follow.

*

Eddie felt his rage begin to cool as they passed his father’s house. He was glad of it. Lisa’s betrayal hurt him, but he didn’t want to hurt her back. Not physically, at least. He kept seeing those pictures in his mind of his wife with all those other men. Especially he kept seeing the picture of her lying naked in a reclining chair, laughing while another man sucked on her toes. He had sucked her toes last night! She had teased him into it, and the way she had sighed and giggled had made it as pleasurable for him as it had apparently been for her. Damn her.

His sister Bree ran down the back steps of their parents’ house. “Eddie!” she called. “You’ll never guess what.”

“Not now, Bree!” he snapped, striding past her without a pause.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lisa shrug apologetically at Bree. That made him angry because it made it seem he had something to apologize for. He opened the door to their house and gestured Lisa in. She went into the kitchen and hung her purse over the back of a chair. She sat down at the table, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at him with cool inquiry. That expression re-ignited his ire. He clenched his fists and paced in front of her to calm his flaring temper. She said nothing, looking at him with such unruffled calm that a suppressed growl hurt his throat. But he forced himself to use a quiet voice.

“Would you care to explain what you were doing with Dane?”

She pursed her pink lips. “I was showing him my phone.”

“Really.” Eddie almost managed to keep his voice steady. He paced four steps to the left, four steps to the right, over and over. “And that’s why he decided he wanted to challenge me for you?”

Lisa’s eyes followed him across the floor and back. “I don’t know why he did that. I didn’t want him to.”

The pain boiling up in his heart made him pace faster. “How many husbands have you had?”

She lifted her open palms up like an offering. “Only one. You, Eddie. I’ve never been married before.”

He stopped and whirled on her, shouting, “But you’ve been with other men! The things we do in bed you’ve done with them!”

“Yes.” Lisa’s voice was small but steady.

“Oh, God.” His clenched fists pressed against his forehead, and his heartbreak quivered in his voice. “Why? Lisa, why?”

He saw her cheek twitch as if she were biting it. “Eddie, it was different then. Everybody did it.”

“So it didn’t mean anything to you? You gave yourself away because … it felt good? You were bored? You were lonely?” He saw her cringe slightly at his rising voice and jerked his temper back. “Why, Lisa?”

“First of all, that is in the past. It has nothing to do with you. In the Times Before, a woman could be with any man she wanted. I didn’t do anything wrong. I made love with men I felt something for. I thought they loved me too.”

“What about Brent?” He spat the name. “He loved you. And you let another man suck your toes.”

Her cool façade cracked. She sat up straighter in the chair. “No. That was a lie. He never loved me. He
used
me. And the picture in the magazine? That was
not me
. Brent hired a man, and a woman who looked a little like me, and let the paparazzi know—anonymously!—where they could be found. I was in the Caribbean at the time, but I was not with a man!”

“Brent lied? Why would he lie? It would make him look like a weak fool who couldn’t keep his woman satisfied.”

Lisa made a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “I wish I could have thrown that in his face. It would have been true too. Brent!” Bitter disgust dripped off the name. “No, he broke the story so people would feel sorry for him. Poor, faithful Brent, whose girlfriend turned out to be cheating on him. Except the truth was she really loved him and thought he loved her. You know what he got out of the deal? A reality TV show. And a lawsuit. I was stupid to file the lawsuit. It would probably just get him higher ratings.”

Eddie couldn’t follow half of what she said, but he understood the bitterness in her voice well enough. His own anger still burned like a sullen coal inside him. “But Brent wasn’t the only man you were with. There were many.”

“So?” Lisa’s eyes were angry when they met his. “That was before I ever knew you.”

“You liked it,” he accused.

“Of course I liked it. I like sex. Haven’t you noticed?”

The embers of his anger burst into flame at her taunt. He hardly knew what he was doing when he yanked her up out of the chair and pinned her against the kitchen wall. It was only when he heard the snarl rumbling in his chest he realized how close he was to the forbidden change. He ran a quick tongue over his teeth, relieved to find them unchanged. A glance at his fingertips reassured him his claws hadn’t popped out. He thumped his forehead into the wall beside her face.

“Lisa,” he began.

“Eddie, what’s happened to your face? You look strange. That’s how you looked at the library when…” She trailed off, smart enough to not mention Dane to him in his current mood.

Eddie pressed his forehead harder into the wall, trying to hide. Was he turning into the creature? He had fought it his whole life. He gritted his teeth, willing the ugly transformation away. “You make me crazy,” he muttered. “I’m not feeling entirely human right now.” He waited, breathing hard until he was sure he was in control of himself before lifting his face from the wall to stare at her. “You are my wife.
Mine.
Don’t ever forget it, or someone will die.”

“Be a little more dramatic, why don’t you?” Lisa suggested, trying to shrug his hands off her shoulders. “I’m your wife, not your slave. You don’t get to order me around like I wasn’t even a person. And don’t growl at me! You’re not a dog.”

Not a dog, no. The snarl was a sub-vocal rumble tearing at his grip. He forced himself to let her go, one finger at a time. “I’m going out tonight. Don’t wait up for me.”

“Right now? We’re not done talking!” she protested.

He had to get out of here before he lost all control. “We’re done. We won’t ever mention it again. From this moment, we’re starting fresh. Any other men you were with before you came here are in the past.” Eddie curled his fists to hide the claws. “Keep it that way, Lisa. Stay away from other men or pay the consequences.”

“Pay the consequences?” She rubbed her hands over her shoulders, as if easing pain. “What consequences?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Her snarl was more lady-like than his would be. He could not lose control here in front of her. He rushed to the back door and slammed out of the house just in time. The creature inside him exploded through his clothes, leaving his shirt in shreds. He felt his alien body rolling gloriously in the dried grass, ridding itself of the pants and boots that bound him. Then he lunged to his four paws, let out a scream of joyful abandon, and raced away from his wife, his parents, and the town that felt like a trap closing around him.

Lisa blinked, staring down the short hall to the back door. How had her husband moved so fast? And where did he get the idea he could walk out on an argument? A scream like a woman in pain sounded from the backyard. Lisa ran to the window and tore the curtain aside to look out.

Only a few yards from the house, a tawny-furred animal stood, its head tilted toward the sky, mouth open to show huge fangs, its tail lashing from side to side. Lisa didn’t know much about big cats, but this was a big cat. A mountain lion? Did Nebraska have mountain lions? She couldn’t help but admire its lithe build, even as a shudder went through her. How had the animal gotten into the compound? Of course, cats could jump. Could this cat jump even the tall fence around the mayor’s section of town?

Where was Eddie? Oh, God,
where was Eddie
? Had the cat eaten him?

In a golden streak, the cat ran away. Lisa clamped her hand over her mouth. The cat couldn’t have eaten Eddie. Eddie had slammed the door only a minute ago. It would take longer to eat a full grown man, wouldn’t it? And she hadn’t seen any blood on the cat’s muzzle. She leaned against the wall, limp. So where was Eddie?

Her stomach growled. She jumped and laughed shakily at herself. It hadn’t been the distant cat. She and Eddie had breakfast before they’d gone into town, but that was hours ago. The sun had the slanting glare that said it would go down soon, so it must be suppertime. Lisa turned to the stove. She hadn’t had to cook anything by herself yet. Eddie had done most of the work for her. But she wasn’t stupid. She could figure out how to put a casserole dish of leftovers into the oven to heat up without help.

Thirty minutes later, Lisa was in tears. There had been dim coals in the stove when she’d begun trying to get the wood to light. Now there was nothing. She had watched Eddie brush the ashes off the coals and add wood several times. How hard could it be? The coals never just died on him.

She lifted her head as she heard the backdoor open. Expecting Eddie, she jumped to her feet. But it was Bree who came into the kitchen.