Promise Me (17 page)

I tried not to cling to him.  I knew he was reluctant enough already. He held me for a long moment at the precipice of the wild desert outback as the sun committed to its daily struggle across the sky. 

“Coyotes,” Grayson said with a smile, pointing to a couple of grayish blurs darting among the ironwood.  I heard the men beginning to make their way to their bikes
in a flurry of hard cussing. 

“Defiant
up!” Orion bellowed and started his engine. 

Gray took my face between his hands and kissed me with slow sweetness. 

“I’ll miss you,” I said. 

“Just o
ne day,” he said, giving me one last regretful look. 

I tried to smile, not wanting to add to his anxiety. 
The thought of spending the night without him beside me was almost unbearable.  I shook my head at my own foolishness.  I was a grown woman.  Being alone for a day wouldn’t kill me.  Still, I was grateful that Kira had extended the invitation to stay at the house for the night.   

Orion seemed
restless to get underway, but Gray paused by Teague’s trailer.  Teague was standing outside wearing nothing but a dirty pair of jeans, his arms moodily crossed. 

Gray said something to him that I couldn’t hear and Teague glanced at me and nodded tiredly.  Gray slapped his shoulder and quickly reached his bike
.  He and the rest of the Defiant men, except for Teague, followed Orion out in a mighty roar of engines and dust. 

I hadn’t asked Gray exactly why the club needed to go to Lake Havasu and he hadn’t offered to tell me.  Kira had mentioned more than once that Orion didn’t talk club business with her.  She had shrugged and said her father, leader of another club
before his murder, had been of the same mind.  That was just the way of it. 

It would be hours before Rachel would be up and about, getting the bar ready for opening.  Kira ten
ded to be an even later sleeper so I was on my own for a while.

I settled into the shallow sofa which, though a bit musty, was comfortable.  Kira had given me a book,
The Quartzsite Trip
.   She joked that it might be the only novel specifically about Quartzsite, or at least bearing the ‘Quartzsite’ name in the title.  It was an easy story to enjoy.  Set in the early 1960s, an unusual English teacher established the custom of bringing a diverse group of his students on a weeklong camping trip to Quartzsite.  Reading it made me regret that I had missed out on participating in traditional high school. 

I was nearing the end of the book and kept rereading once scene in particular.  It was the last night of the trip and a hard rain began falling, the kind of fearsome deluge I now knew was part of the perils of desert life.  In the wake of the downpour, several of the students noticed odd little fish-like creatures darting around in the sudden pools of water. 
Tadpole shrimp
, their teacher told them.  He went on to explain how those abruptly hatching eggs had likely laid dormant for untold millennia.  The town of Quartzsite, Arizona was once covered by a great ocean. The eggs of these tiny creatures had been left behind when the water ebbed and the land changed.  They survived in their latent state under extreme conditions until a certain level of water pressure awakened them. 

The
n the tadpole shrimp would hatch.  They would live.  They would lay more eggs.  They would die. It seemed like an incredibly long time to wait in order to spend such a cruelly short life cycle.  I made a mental to tell Grayson about it.  Such things fascinated him. 

I put the book down reluctantly, looking at the
clock.  It was nearly eight.  Rachel would be waking up soon to get the bar ready to open.  Anyway, now that I had torn my eyes away from the pages I was troubled by the stillness all around me.  I’d heard Teague slowly sputtering down the road on his bike about fifteen minutes earlier.  As I looked around the trailer, Gray’s absence tugged at me acutely.  I would be glad for some company. 

After a quick shower I toweled off my hair and looked at myself critically in the mirror.  Gray thought I was beautiful.  He said it often enough and I saw the truth in the way he l
ooked at me.  The memory of him made me smile.  It was going to be a long twenty four hours. 

I dressed in shorts and a light green t-shirt and stared at myself again.  I looked like just a normal young woman.  I looked like everyone else. 

The geode Gray had split in half was kept on the tiny table beside the bed.  I walked over and lightly fingered the two jagged pieces.  Then I carefully held them together, pleased that they fit seamlessly, and replaced them on the table. 

The sudden cold wave which washed over me was puzzling.  My pulse raced and my mouth was instantly dry, but s
ometimes instinct precedes awareness.  A primitive combination of physical and cerebral responses warn the body of what the mind cannot yet recognize: 
Danger
.  I knew it was in the room with me before I turned around. 

I looked into the face of my nightmare and it smile
d at me. 

“Hello, wife,” it said. 

***

“Don’t,” he warned as I opened my mouth to scream.  “There are soldiers surrounding you.  We know that the men are gone.  You wouldn’t want to risk the women, would you?”   His voice was syrupy with malice. 

I closed my mouth.  Rachel.  Kira.  No, I wouldn’t risk them. 

Winston motioned to the opposite chair.  “Sit, my dear.” 

I shook my head, clenching my fists and bracing for what would come next.  He wouldn’t touch me.  I would fight him to the death.  Desperately I looked around for a weapon.  The gun.  Gray had left the rifle just inside the door. 

Winston sighed.  “All right, then.”  He smiled at me as if he were of no more threat than a kindly uncle.  “I’ve come to fetch you home, Promise.”  

“Fuck you.” 

Winston raised his eyebrows slightly but seemed undisturbed.  He looked me over casually.  “I see you’ve acquired some new habits in your time away.  Took some doing to get here, you know.  All I had to go on were the words written on the jackets of those gang members w
ho stole you.  Once we realized where Rachel was, that wanton bitch, it all made sense.” 

I couldn’
t breathe.  I remembered my discomfort in the presence of man who had been in the bar yesterday.  He did know all about me after all.  Because he had been sent to find me.

Winston’s smile was unwavering.  “Your sister is back among us now.  She’ll be searching for a husband to look after her.” 

I caught his meaning.  But I wouldn’t be fooled again.  Resigning myself to Jericho Valley imprisonment and torture wouldn’t help my sister one goddamn bit.  “I hate you,” I said.

My words seemed to have little impact on him.  He looked around Gray’s trailer with
open distaste.   

“Tell me, Promise,” Winston Allred said mildly.  “What was it like to fuck the devil?” 

I didn’t flinch.  “I can tell you that,” I said loudly, “as well as any of your other
wives
.”  

He stared at me for a moment and then
moved with terrifying speed.  I made a dash for the door.  This time I would not submit.  This time he would have to kill me.

Just as I managed to fling the door open,
my hair was grabbed from behind, yanking me backwards into a clumsy stumble.  As I went down I kicked out at his fat knee.  Gray had told me it was a vulnerable place on the body and to always take advantage of it if I could.

Grayson.

What would he do when he came home to find me missing?  Or dead?  He wouldn’t recover, I knew that much.  He would retreat into the violent despair which had threatened to overcome him in prison.  He would be lost. 

As Winston grunted and grabbed the front of my shirt, I kicked out with more force, catching him in a weak spot and causing him to lose his footing.  I desperately grabbed a chipped plate from the table and brought it on his
head with every source of strength in my body.

The impact was satisfying, as was Winston’s moan of pain, though the plate shattered and cut my hands. 

Then I glimpsed the rifle.  It leaned casually against the wall just to the right of the door.  In a few more lurching steps it would be in my hands.  My fingers closed around the stock and I saw the mess of blood from my cuts.  I knew the rifle was loaded.  I swung it around but Winston had already managed to rise.  He crashed into me with the force of a mountain, tackling me into the door.  I felt the jarring blow of my head hitting something hard as the door gave way and spilled us both in a tangled struggle out into the dirt.  Winston bled freely from the wound on his head but I saw with horror it wouldn’t be enough to stop him. 

I still had the rifle in my hands. 
But then suddenly Winston had his hands around it too.  His fist lashed out and caught me on the right side of my head.  My knees gave way automatically and my face was suddenly inches from the gritty sand.  I stared at it, wondering stupidly if hidden somewhere in that beige blandness was a nest of tadpole shrimp waiting to hatch. 

And then I looked up and saw him.  Teague. He stood perhaps twenty yards away staring at me with a blank expression as Winston struggled to get to his feet behind me. 

I looked into that man’s eyes and remembered what he’d said the day I arrived, about his home turning into a halfway house for indigent young women.  I knew he resented my presence as much as he resented a lot of things.  But I also remembered the way Gray had warmly slapped him on the shoulder with confident trust. I remembered how they both wore the jacket of Defiant. 

Winston panted and fiddled with the gun.  I wondered if he intended to shoo
t me.  Teague switched his gaze to my tormentor and I saw the hatred narrow his eyes.  I shouldn’t have doubted him.  Not for a moment. 

Despite the fact the Winston was readying the rifle Teague barreled ahead anyway, breaking into a run.  Winston raised the rifle but it wasn’t soon enough.  Teague tore it from his hands with a grunt.  Without pausing, he spun around with the rifle gripped in his hands like a bat and smashed it into the side of Winston’s fat face. 

Winston managed to feint slightly so that the full impact didn’t catch him.  But it was enough to deliver a substantial blow and he stumbled backwards, falling. 

Teague glanced at me.  “Run,” he said.

He aimed the rifle at Winston’s sputtering figure.  I tried to get my feet underneath me, gritting my teeth against the lightheaded haze which threatened.  At first I couldn’t make sense of what I saw.  Then I remembered Winston’s words. 

“There are soldiers surrounding you.” 

The man who stealthily approached looked vaguely familiar.  As he came closer I recognized him.  He was Winston’s eldest son, one of the few young men chosen to remain in Jericho Valley and fulfill their version of destiny.  He carried a gun and was a younger image of his wicked father. 

I tried to scream out a warning to Teague but he was grimly intent on the enemy in front of him.  Winston panted and blood dripped from the side of his head as he cowered in front of the rifle. 

The crack against Teague’s skull was audible as Winston’s son,
named Harold I remembered, moved in quickly and pistol whipped him across the back of the head.  Teague sank to the ground, dropping the rifle and landing face first in the dirt. 

A cry of despair ripped from my throat as I tried to crawl over to him.  But someone
reached under my arms and hauled me roughly to my feet.  I struggled to break free but hard hands grabbed me under my chin and with terror I beheld the furious face of Bishop Talbot. 

“Wicked girl,” he spat before flinging me away. 

I fell back to the dirt on my hands and knees, the sandy grit mixing with the blood from my cut hands. 

Bishop Talbot glanced casually down at the prone body of Teague.  I tried to discern if Teague was still breathing but my hair kept falling in my face, obscuring my view. 

My uncle slapped Harold on the shoulder and motioned that he ought to help Winston, who moaned and struggled to wipe the blood which continued to drip from the side of his face.  He looked at his red fingers and seemed stunned by the sight of them. 

Bishop Talbot cast a dispassionate look on the entire tableau and nodded his head toward someone
standing behind me. 

“You.  Get the girl. 
We are leaving this evil behind.” 

When more hands reached for me I lashed out with a
violent burst of fury, kicking, scratching.  If Winston and my uncle assumed I would go meekly they were mistaken. 

Bishop Aston Talbot gave me a disgusted look.  “You have caused enough trouble.  I thought it better to leave you to this horrible world but your loving husband believes you can be redeemed.” 

I rose to my feet slowly and directed all the fire of my rage towards my uncle.  “You are evil.”  I nodded to Winston.  “All of you. You do what you do because you are terrible men.  No god would demand it.” 

Aston Talbot took two steps in my direction and cheerfully slapped me across the face.  But I grabbed his rubbery arm in futile wrath and tried to hurl him to the ground.