Of Eternal Life (21 page)

Eli studied the woman’s prone form.
Enlisted?

He shook his head. There was time later to iron out all the particulars.

“I’ll maintain the perimeter,” Collins stated. “You go on ahead and get our girl, Eli. And be rehearsing ways you can beg her forgiveness for doubting her.”

It was perhaps the millionth time Collins had made a comment like that since they’d left the house. And, just like all the other times, hope flared in Eli’s chest, but it was squelched by doubt.

Finding a woman in Taylor’s employ solidified the possibility that Abilene was working with the man.

Eli nodded once, then crept toward the hotel room door that was his mark. He kept to the shadows as much as he could with the bright moonlight illuminating the crumbling parking lot of the hotel.

When he reached the door, he pressed his back to the wall beside the frame, the Sig Sauer in his left hand resting against his thigh.

With no increased effort on Eli’s part, the words of Abilene filled Eli’s ears:
Please…. I’ll help you capture Eli.

Eli’s world turned on its head.

He didn’t realize he’d held onto a large portion of hope where Abilene’s loyalty was concerned until he heard her offer to help capture him. The devastation he felt upon hearing those words taught him he had new depths of despair to discover in his life.

He’d thought he’d hit rock bottom in the lab.

He hadn’t even been close.

Abilene would do anything to capture Eli for Major Taylor, to help the experiments — including pretending to be a victim.

And Eli had fallen for it, too. Hook, line, and sucker.

The weight of his body was almost too much for his bones. He wanted to sink down to the chilled sidewalk and hold his head in his hands.

But he couldn’t do that with a gun in his hand.

So, I go to Plan B
, he thought.
I can wallow after
.

Rage swept in. He felt the Voice’s disapproval, but the Voice had been oddly quiet since Eli had heard Abilene’s treachery.

Eli took that as an indication that he was right.

He swung around, and with a quick, violent turn of the doorknob, broke the flimsy lock. He opened the door and laid eyes on the woman he had proposed to tonight.

Abilene looked small sitting in the middle of the queen-sized bed. Her wrists were red and raw, and even through his hate, Eli felt a twinge of anger that she was hurt, even in this slight way.

And then he noticed that her wrists were healing. Really quickly.

His eyes snapped back up to her face. It was perfect.

Eli lost it.

“You fucking son of a bitch,” he wheeled on Taylor and had his hand around the man’s throat before Taylor had even seen him move. “You
turned
her?” Eli’s grip tightened, and Taylor’s face grew read; his eyes bulged.

They planned this!
Before he could exact his revenge on the tormentor, Eli had to address Abilene.

He released Taylor, not even paying notice to how the man collapsed to his knees, coughing and gasping. He turned around and pinned Abilene with the most hateful glare he could muster.

She huddled in on herself further. “E-Eli — ” she began. He stalked closer, cutting her words off with a feral growl.

“I don’t want to hear your lies. You betrayed me,” he spat. “I don’t let that go unpunished.”

Yet, even as Abilene’s eyes grew wide with fear, he knew he couldn’t hurt her. The Voice raised its proverbial hackles at the idea.

No, it would be going against Eli’s own body to hurt this woman, and the realization fueled his anger and hurt. That she could so lightly set him aside when it appeared that he would be under her spell for all of his immortal existence … .

Abilene’s eyes darted to the left to look at a spot over Eli’s shoulder, and Eli spun around just as Major Taylor launched himself at Eli.

Eli took the man’s full weight to his chest, and his air whooshed out of him. His stomach seized.

Both men hit the floor with a cacophonous clash of bones and flesh. Abilene faded from Eli’s mind as he focused on the man who had ruined everything.

Eli felt something akin to euphoria as he realized he was going to finally —
finally
— get revenge on the man who had tortured him for nearly a decade. The man who had stolen his soul. The man who had facilitated his heart-break.

Eli felt a surge of power and anger. He tossed Taylor off him. He scrambled on top of the man, pinning Taylor’s shoulders with his knees. Eli prepared to pummel the man’s face to pulp, but a quick, black blur to the left of his face announced that Taylor had gotten his hands on Eli’s Sig.

Light exploded in Eli’s left eye as the butt of his own pistol crushed his eye socket. Eli sagged for a second as he absorbed the pain, but it was all Taylor needed to gain the upper hand.

Eli was on his back looking up at Taylor as the Tormentor leveled the business end of the Sig Sauer between Eli’s eyes.

It was going to be another kill shot.

Eli had failed. Again.

He would wake up in the laboratory. Again.

And Abilene had ensured it would happen.

Major Taylor’s cheeks were pink with exertion and pure animal pleasure. His breath was billowing in and out of his chest as though he were with a lover. It was so similar to all of the other times Eli’s death had come at the hands of this monster that all of the fight drained out of Eli.

Eli would never win against this man. He hadn’t in the past, and he never would. The Tormentor bettered Eli at every turn.

Eli didn’t have the strength to fight anymore. His mother was dead, the woman he loved had betrayed him, and he was about to kiss Death once more.

What was there left to fight for?

Eli sighed, the motion causing Major Taylor to rise and fall. Then Eli closed his eyes and waited. Waited for the report of the pistol. The smell of the burning powder. The explosion of bone and blood.

The peace of the end.

For the first time in eight years, Eli craved the silence, the calm, that followed death. He was just so damned tired.

The pistol exploded in a jolt so powerful, Eli felt Major Taylor’s body buck. Eli braced himself for the pain.

After a few seconds, Eli’s brows drew together. It didn’t hurt this time. Had he gotten so used to gruesome deaths that he was numb to the pain?

What a blessing that would be in the coming months.

He opened his eyes slowly, not willing to jostle his body and bring on the agony.

The first thing he saw was half of Major Taylor’s face. He blinked again, hoping to dispel the foggy confusion. When he looked again, Eli discovered his eyes had not deceived him.

Half of Major Taylor’s head was gone. A jagged crescent was carved out of the left side of Taylor’s head.

Eli’s eyes flew to the shaking form of Abilene where she stood behind Taylor’s lifeless but still erect form. Abilene held a gun that Eli recognized as Major Taylor’s in her right hand, and it still pressed against Major Taylor’s right temple.

And for the rest of his immortal life, Eli would never forget the look on her face. He expected to see hysterical female. What he saw instead was pure warrior. Abilene’s mouth was set in a grim, determined line. Her eyes were cold, unfeeling, as she observed Taylor’s body. Except for the slight shaking of her body, she was a rock.

Gravity claimed the body’s equilibrium. Taylor’s body slid to the left, off of Eli’s chest, and onto the floor. Eli’s face turned to look at his Tormentor, and they were nose to nose until Eli scrambled away.

When his back smacked against the wall, halting his progress, he looked at Abilene again. “You
killed
him.”

She shrugged. “He was going to hurt you.”

The man, who Eli had fantasized about killing for years but had never been able to defeat, lay dead a few feet away. In the end, Eli hadn’t gotten his own revenge. He hadn’t saved the girl.

She had saved him.

As Abilene laid the tormentor’s pistol on the bed, Eli felt a swelling of love for this amazing woman. He could feel it alter the planes of his face and knew that he was looking at her as if she were his life, but he couldn’t temper his reaction.

He waited for her expression to mirror his, as it had many times over the last few days when they had a moment together, when their feelings for one another had overwhelmed them both.

But Abilene remained resolute. Her eyes never lost their arctic chill. Her face never lost its determined aura.

She turned toward the door, and Eli watched in disbelief as she took measured, deliberate steps across the hotel room.

In shock Eli realized she was leaving.

Leaving him.

“
Abilene
,” he implored, his voice breaking.

She stopped but didn’t turn around.

“Where — ”
are you going?
Eli couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence, terrified of the answer.

“Did you think I would miss the part where you thought I was working with
him
?” she whispered.

Devastating shame became the center of Eli’s world. He remembered with vivid clarity the way he had stormed into the room. The accusation in his voice. The plans he had to hurt and destroy, not just Major Taylor, but Abilene as well, knowing that she’d betrayed him just as he’d always suspected she would.

He’d been so sure.

He’d been such a fucking idiot.

“I was wrong, Abilene,” he stammered. “So wrong — ”

She cut him off. “Save it. You don’t
see
me, Eli. You’ll always be wrong. ‘You’re perfect. You’re a liar. You betrayed me.’ The point is, I’m
me
. And you’re not willing to find out who that is if it doesn’t fit
your
definition of ‘Abilene.’”

Eli’s head snapped back at the power of her words.

“Goodbye, Eli.” Abilene’s voice held not one iota of hesitation as her hand moved to the doorknob and turned.

Eli made a noise of distress, but Abilene didn’t slow down as she walked off into the night leaving the door open behind her.

The air he needed to speak nearly drowned him as his chest spasmed in horror. “Abilene!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. In the space of a heartbeat, Eli was on his feet and pounding pavement to get to her.

But she’d had enough of a head start to get to the truck. Eli watched as his traitor of a mentor handed Abilene the keys, then held the door open for her as she climbed in.

She threw the truck into reverse amidst a violent grinding of gears, and Eli put on a greater burst of speed as she switched into first gear and began to drive off with haste.

He knew he was screaming her name, but he couldn’t hear it over the roar of blood in his ears.

He’d ruined
everything
. She was leaving.

Pulling out of the parking lot.

Gone.

Eli continued to run after the truck long after its taillights had faded into oblivion.

Seconds passed into minutes. Minutes collected.

Eli turned around and began the torturous walk back to the hotel parking lot. Sergeant Collins was standing just where Eli had left him: over the trussed-up form of the woman they’d subdued before Eli had destroyed everything good in his life.

The older man gazed at Eli with a mixture of sympathy and grim anger, and Eli knew that Collins sensed everything that had transpired, from Eli’s betrayal of his woman to Abilene’s actions. Eli wanted to be mad himself, at Collins, but he couldn’t get over the feeling of loss that was crippling him. He stared at Collins for a bit. Finally, “You helped her leave me.”

“You’re damn right I did,” he said in a low voice.

Collins words rolled over Eli, and Eli nodded in acknowledgement.
Message received
.

Eli knew he had been wrong. Couldn’t be more sorry. Knew beyond absolute certainty that he would never doubt Abilene again.

It no longer mattered.

“Do you know where she’s gone?” Eli asked.

Collins nodded but said only, “She’s safe.” The
from the likes of you
was implied. “You have five minutes to pull yourself together, son,” Collins said gently now. “Then the Army will be here. We’ll both be taken into official custody as they clean this mess up and figure out what happened to you for all of these years. You’ll need your wits about you.”

Eli’s world had stopped on its axis with Abilene’s departure. That he would now be expected to continue on, to explain the past eight years, to account for all of the horrors he had encountered … .

Eli dropped to his knees. The gravel from the parking lot tore into his jeans, but he paid it no mind. He groaned in intense emotional pain, a sentiment the Voice echoed.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, hoping the apology found its way across the miles.

Eli heard the crunch of gravel beneath official tires. He straightened and resigned himself to what was about to come.

• • •

Though tears streamed down her face, Abilene had no trouble discerning the road through the truck’s windshield. In the back of her mind, the tiny part that wasn’t screaming at her in anguish for leaving Eli, Abilene recognized that she should at least be seeing a blur. Her vision was flawless.

Another reminder of how everything had changed.

You did the right thing
, the Voice assured her.

Abilene sniffed in abject misery. She
knew
that.

It didn’t make this easier.

She already missed Eli with a physical ache.

The point is, I’m
me, she’d said to him. The problem was, she didn’t really know what that meant, either. Everything she’d accused Eli of — she was just as guilty.

Well, maybe it was time to change that. Once and for all.

Another wave of emotional pain wafted over her, and she bent forward over the steering wheel and sobbed anew.

Abilene, honey, use your brain. Distract yourself
, the Voice whispered.

She sat up straight and wiped her runny nose with one forearm. Right. Distract herself.

It was something she’d done many times as a kid to escape the hell of growing up under a microscope. She’d always gone over what she’d learned in science class that day — her favorite subject.