Frostfire (11 page)
Authors: Lynn Viehl
The prognosis had been far worse than anything he’d imagined: Thanks to the repeated injuries and his altered DNA, his immune system had begun to attack his spine. At the rate the deterioration was progressing, he had less than a year to live.
Findley guided the limousine through the automatic iron gate between two ten-foot stone walls that encircled Taske’s winter home, the somewhat palatial mansion he had inherited from his parents, along with several hundred acres of woods, hills, and streams. He always wintered here at Tannerbridge because it contained his happiest memories as well as the nerve center of his private operations. Findley and his new house manager, Morehouse, were the only staff he kept on during the holidays, but both men had no plans and Taske imagined the three of them would enjoy a quiet bachelors’ celebration of the season, and he would have at least a month of uninterrupted research into finding the identity and whereabouts of the elusive Delilah.
What troubled Taske the most was what he would have to do when he found his friend. He couldn’t afford to ask for her cooperation and be refused, not with all that was at stake. Nor could he invite her to take sanctuary with him, which would go against the rules they had established for the group. Delilah would never agree to it. The only thing he could do was the thing he found most abhorrent, the one transgression that he knew would appall her, and for which he would never forgive himself.
As soon as Taske located Delilah, he planned to kidnap her.
After Lilah awoke, it took only a few hours for her body to free itself from the effects of the drugs. Walker also seemed to be getting a little better, but he still couldn’t move freely, and harsh lines of pain etched deeper into his face as he suffered through several episodes of uncontrolled tremors.
“Is it the drugs?” Lilah whispered, holding on to him after the fourth time he convulsed.
“Wearing off.” The cords in his neck stood out as he seemed to be fighting against the reaction, but Lilah saw that he couldn’t control his movements or stop the shakes, which traveled down his arm and pounded his fist into the floor of the truck with hard, booming thuds.
Lilah caught his wrist and pulled his hand away from the floor. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
The tremors gradually slowed and then stopped as Walker went limp. Exhaustion and self-disgust filled his expression.
“Hey,” Lilah murmured. “Don’t do that. It’s not your fault.”
“Everything . . . ” He stopped and rested his brow against her shoulder, too tired to finish the thought.
The truck’s brakes squealed as it slowed down and came to a stop. Lilah listened to opening and slamming doors, and the fainter sound of two male voices arguing. They were too muffled to make out the words, but they drifted around the truck toward Lilah’s feet. Walker lifted his head, his eyes narrowing.
“Coming,” he warned her. “Check us. Quiet. Don’t move.”
She nodded, closing her eyes and holding still. The sound of the truck door being raised made her heart quake, but Walker turned his hand and pushed his stiff fingers through hers, holding them tight.
“See?” a young male voice said. “They ain’t moved. I told you, that sound was just from some boxes bouncing around.”
An older voice answered him with “Shut up, Joey.”
The truck bed dipped as someone climbed in. Lilah held her breath as she heard footsteps thump across the floor and the light over them was blotted out. Something prodded the tarp, a jabbing finger. It struck the knob of her elbow, which she instinctively held in a rigid position.
“It’s like nine degrees back here, Bob,” Joey said. “They’re ice cubes now, man.”
“Yeah, I guess,” the man standing over her said in a deeper, disgusted voice. “I coulda sworn I heard something.” A hand scraped against the canvas and then took a handful of it. “We gotta stop them from bopping around like this.”
As the tarp was pulled away, Lilah felt a biting cold flash of sensation, and the warm dampness of her skin vanished under a layer of hard ice crystals that enveloped her whole body. She couldn’t open her eyes now even if she wanted to; her eyelids were frozen shut.
“Nothing to tie them down with.” A stiff finger prodded her breast. “Hey, she’s not froze up all the way yet. Huh.” That was the younger man’s voice. “I wonder if she can still feel anything.”
“We dosed her with enough shit to kill three horses,” Bob snapped. “She’s a fucking Popsicle, pinhead.”
Lilah heard a grunt, and then her chest flattened as Walker’s body was rolled on top of her.
“What the hell are you doing?” Bob demanded.
“You said you don’t want them sliding all over the place. His weight’ll keep her down.” Joey snickered as he rearranged some boxes around them to keep them in place. “There. Now he’s not going anywhere, are you, Marine?” He nudged Lilah’s hip with his foot and brayed laughter. “This one’ll stay on top of you as long as you want, baby, so you two have a real good time.”
“You’re a perverted twerp.” Something rasped, and Bob sighed. “Christ, I feel like hell.”
“You’re just tired,” Joey said. “Let me drive for a while. You can catch some z’s.”
Silence stretched out as the men hovered. Lilah didn’t dare try to breathe, and her lungs felt as if they were going to burst. Finally she felt the canvas being pulled over them and the voices moved away.
“You better wake me before we cross into Mississippi,” she heard Bob say as he climbed out of the truck. “If we’re gonna get there before this frigging blizzard hits, we’ve gotta head north and take Seventy.”
The truck’s sliding door slammed down.
Chapter 7
W
alker’s body pinned Lilah’s to the bed of the truck like a slab of concrete, preventing her from even wriggling beneath him. Even more frightening than his smothering weight was the rage she felt pouring from him, so deep and violent that it gripped him as tightly as the paralysis that had held him immobile. His anger drowned out everything: his reason, his self-control, even her own presence.
alker’s body pinned Lilah’s to the bed of the truck like a slab of concrete, preventing her from even wriggling beneath him. Even more frightening than his smothering weight was the rage she felt pouring from him, so deep and violent that it gripped him as tightly as the paralysis that had held him immobile. His anger drowned out everything: his reason, his self-control, even her own presence.
That inferno seemed to be bubbling up through his skin, for she could feel the layer of ice covering both of them rapidly melting; thin patches of it slid away from their limbs and fell like slush onto the floor around them.
Walker opened his eyes to see Lilah looking up at him, but he didn’t seem to recognize her. Her vision blurred as the frost on her eyelashes turned to fat beads; she blinked and they slid like tears into her hair. She felt like weeping, but with him on top of her like this she could hardly breathe.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He moved then, grunting as he managed to prop some of his weight on his forearm, which allowed her to take a shallow breath. The shift also made her feel the stiff length of his penis pressing against her crotch. He couldn’t roll away from her, not wedged in as they were by the boxes Joey had moved. Lilah knew it wasn’t Walker’s fault, but the intimacy of their position made her cringe inside. They were total strangers who were only a few inches from having sex. She didn’t want him to see the shame she felt, so she turned her face away from him.
A deep, guttural sound emerged from his throat as his face dropped against her neck, and she felt the grip of his free hand on her throat, holding her as the edge of his teeth scraped over the pulse beneath her skin. He didn’t bite her, but a terrible panic came over her as she realized he was fighting not to. She put a hand to his face, lifting it so that she could see his eyes.
Her ability jumped out of her like a wild thing, trying to grab whatever she could from his emotions.
Locked inside the rage that had taken over his mind, two different needs tore at Walker. Lilah realized that part of him wanted to lunge at her neck again and tear at it; another part wanted to make the parody of the sexual position Joey had placed them in real. He was fighting hard to resist both, but she could sense that he was losing.
Lilah tried to calm him with her own thoughts, and found herself abruptly shoved back out of his mind.
His hand tightened on her throat even as he put his mouth against her ear and spoke in a flat, tight monotone. “Push me. Off. Hurry.”
She couldn’t use her ability to calm him because he was human. Her throat burned from the pressure of his fingers digging in. Only his rapidly dwindling will stood between her and rape—or possibly death.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
Some tight, bleak thing inside her that was older than the forces ravaging Walker understood the brutal hunger and killing rage. It stood apart from them, reserved, almost cold. It had been so long since she had felt it that she almost didn’t recognize it. It didn’t care what happened to Walker, but it wouldn’t let him harm her.
Now it was Lilah’s turn to panic. She had to get him away from her before she lost control and did something unforgivable. But her weak limbs refused to cooperate, and he was too far gone to move.
Take him
, the watcher inside her whispered.
He’s yours.
, the watcher inside her whispered.
He’s yours.
Her fingertips slid across his cheek and cupped his head. “Walker, look at me.” When his dazed eyes focused on hers, she reached into him, this time giving him all her strength. “It’s all right. We can do this together.” Her words cost her what breath was left in her lungs, but his grip on her throat loosened. She struggled to take another breath before she wheezed, “Move to the right as far as you can. Use my arm as a brace.”
With some difficulty he shifted his weight over, allowing Lilah to take another, deeper breath. As he did, she brought up her free hand and pushed at his shoulder.
“Good.” The word burst from her lips as his weight pressed down on her ribs. She tugged at his shoulder, and then pushed it again. “Now . . . rock.”
He had very little strength, so his movements were almost imperceptible at first, but she put her weight behind his and helped him rock back and forth, a little more each time. Her ribs began to feel like dry twigs that were being bent and nearly ready to snap, and then his body rolled over so that his back lay pressed against the boxes beside them.
“That’s it.” She inched one of her legs over his to keep from being rolled onto her back by the movements of the truck. They were squashed together on their sides, and she was starting to lose the feeling in the arm that was cuffed to Walker’s, but she could breathe now. Her side and her throat didn’t hurt too much. She also saw that some of the blind, vicious fury had faded from his expression. “Better?”
His eyes shifted toward the front of the truck. “Kill them.” He almost growled the words. “Slow.”
“I’d rather get away from them, fast,” she said, and tried to smile. “We can get out of this, Walker. If we work together, I know we can.”
He frowned at her, as if he couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. “Together.”
“You and me, we’re a team now.” She wiggled her numb arm, shifting the cuffs that bound them together. “Not like you can get rid of me yet, remember?”
“No.” His confusion ebbed, and his expression grew remote. “Not yet.”
He didn’t know what to make of Lilah. He had bruised her, and come within a heartbeat of doing worse, but even with his hand wrapped around her throat she had shown no fear. Now she lay relaxed against him, her body as soft and easy as if they had been intimate for years. He knew she had felt his killing rage, but not once had she screamed or begged for mercy. Instead she had comforted him. As if he had been the one made to suffer.
He needed to understand this. “Lilah.”
She reached up to press her fingertips against his lips, and only then did he realize the truck had stopped moving.
He listened, straining to hear the men’s voices, but this time they were silent as they climbed out of the truck. He knotted his hands, sure they had heard them and were coming, but the two sets of footsteps moved forward, away from the back of the truck.
“They’re gone for now.” She relaxed. “If they come back, we’ll have to assume the missionary position again.”
She sounded brisk, as if she were discussing nothing of importance instead of what must have been an ordeal for her.
“No more,” he promised. “I will. Tear his. Head off.”
She touched his cheek. “My friend, you’ll have to stand in line.”
After nearly being crushed under him, and coming within inches of having her throat torn out while he ravaged her body, she was smiling at him. She was calling him her friend. He didn’t know what to say or think.
Lilah pushed away the canvas and looked around the interior of the truck. “What is all this stuff?” she asked, her voice low.
He regarded the stacks of unmarked boxes, their cardboard sides white with frost, and tried to remember what he had heard the men say before they had taken her.
“Supplies. Lab.” He spotted a black duffel bag, a bulging garbage bag, and an aluminum case in one corner and nodded toward them. “Men. Their things.”
“We should check them and see if we can find some clothes.” Lilah got up on her knees and rose until their cuffed hands stopped her. “Can you try to stand?”
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