Rebel (21 page)

Which reminded me I still wasn’t safe. I managed to inch my way up the last rise to the copse of trees, protected by their twisted, sheltering branches, and I heard the soft rumble of male voices from the shore mixed with the sounds of the ocean, the water slapping against the rocks, the wind in the trees. I couldn’t
recognize them. I only knew that
he
was there. The one who had tried to kill me.

I could sense his malevolent presence so strongly that it made me shiver. Danger lay just over the rise of the rock.

I could get back to shore. I just needed to rest for a little bit, and then I could swim back in, make my way to my room, and go find a nice, big tub to soak in.

The voices stopped. I had to risk it, had to see who was trying to hurt me, or there was no way I’d be safe. I wouldn’t be able to prove anything, but at least I’d know whom to keep clear of. And if I found out who’d done it, I’d figure out why. As far as I knew, I wasn’t a danger to anyone.

I inched closer, the rock scraping my skin. Closer and closer to the edge; I would just take a swift look before ducking back down, hoping against hope he wouldn’t see me.

One more foot and I’d be there. I pushed, and rose up.

He was walking away. I could see only his back, but I knew who had stood there, watching the waves.

Cain.

He must have felt my eyes on him, for he stopped, turning back to stare at the rock, but I’d dropped back down so he couldn’t see me. I laid my face against the rock, and for some reason, I cried.

What an abysmal idiot I was. I knew he was danger personified. I knew he was manipulative, conscienceless, a liar and a trickster. A predator of the first order. So why was I crying? Had he blinded me with lust when he’d kissed me, fooled me with false tenderness when he’d held me? Was I so gullible that I’d actually believed him?

Apparently I was. At least no one was there to see the collapse of my foolishness. I could wallow in misery, safe on my own little island, and it would be my secret. When I dove back into the water, the sea would wash my tears and my idiocy away, and I would emerge whole again.

If I’d ever been whole in the first place. Thomas had rescued and then smothered me, but I’d begun to heal. Only begun, I realized now. I was still broken—Cain had proved that to me.

T
HE LAST LIGHT HAD ALMOST VANISHED
by the time I dove off the rock, the water enveloping me in its icy embrace, and for a brief moment I considered letting the tide carry me out to sea. But I was made of tougher stuff than that, so I swam toward shore with slow, easy strokes, telling myself I was leaving everything behind—the pain, the fear, the vulnerability—and ready to build a new, stronger skin.

I was shivering by the time I reached the shore. It never grew that cold in Sheol, but the temperature dipped once the sun set, and the breeze was strong tonight. No one was in sight, and instinctively I knew there was no danger near me. At least that sense had sharpened, though I didn’t really need it. All I had to do was see Cain to know I was in trouble. I’d known that from the beginning, but somewhere
along the way I seemed to have forgotten. How else could I have ended up in his bed, ready to surrender?

I wrapped my arms around my wet body and hurried along the shore, back toward the house. I got more than a few curious looks as I reached the compound, and I saw Tory start toward me, but Michael caught her arm, distracting her, and I rushed into the main hall, still dripping water.

It would dry, and I didn’t care. I’d missed dinner, and I was hungry, but I could eat in my room. I stopped briefly in the small kitchen off the dining room anyway, before continuing on my way, the larger butcher knife hidden beneath my flowing, sodden garments. All I wanted was a deep, hot bath, but I would dream about food while I soaked, and it would be waiting in my room when I returned.

Each apartment in Sheol had a bathroom with a shower. The tubs were in separate rooms, since few people used them, and there was a large, spa-like room near the annex that hadn’t been used in years. I was going to get into that tub and stay there until my skin wrinkled—it would take that long to warm my bones.

I could feel that I was safe—Cain wasn’t in his rooms, and I had no sense of danger. I had no idea whether it had anything to do with my visions or not, but things were becoming clearer, the sense of danger, the presentiment of evil. I only hoped I could trust it.

I stopped in my room long enough to grab clean clothes. I was icy cold, sandy, and sticky, and for some reason I still wanted to cry. The sea was supposed to wash all that vulnerability away, I thought, automatically shoving my wet hair away from my face and then wincing as I felt the place that had taken the brunt of my fall. At least I had stopped bleeding.

The bathing room was spacious, the tub closer to a Japanese soaking tub than a modern bathtub. Locking the door, I turned on the water, set the knife down nearby, then stripped off my wet clothes and stepped under the shower to rinse away the surface layer of grit and sand and blood.

My chest hurt, and I looked down to see the scratches from crawling over the rocks. My knees were bruised, my fingers battered from my desperate climb. In fact, I was a total mess, and if immersion in the ocean hadn’t helped, then a hot bath wouldn’t fix things either. But at least it would warm me up.

The lights were too bright overhead when I stepped out of the shower, so I crossed the room and switched them off. There was a skylight over the tub, and the moon was almost full, shining down with a silvery light. I set the knife down on a nearby table and let out a shaky sigh of contentment. Perfect.

The water was like a lover’s caress, warm and comforting, flowing around me as I sank deep into
its welcoming arms. I slid down, full-length in the huge tub, and ducked my head underwater, feeling it swirl around me. The cuts and abrasions stung for a moment, then slowly began to calm, and when I pushed back up I felt renewed.

I leaned my head back, staring at the empty sky overhead. Not so empty. I glimpsed a graceful silhouette flying overhead, dark against the bright moon, and my body tightened in sudden fear. I knew, I
knew
who it was—the one who had tried to kill me. It had to be Cain. I could feel the malevolence even from here, and I stared up at him, willing him to come closer. Instead he flew up, high, high into the sky, and I leaned back, relief and sorrow washing over me, secure in the knowledge that at least for now I was safe. Cain was gone, though who knew for how long.

I could already feel my wet hair curling around my head, but I didn’t care. For now I was safe, and I could stay in this tub forever, staring at the distant moon.

I sensed rather than heard the footsteps outside. The bath chamber was off a different corridor from my room, a corridor with nothing else. There was no reason for someone to be walking here.

But someone most definitely was standing outside the door. I closed my eyes, trying to sense who was there, but there was no hint of danger, no
feeling of ill will, and I relaxed. Cain was too far away to hurt me. It must be Tory or Rachel or even Allie checking on me.

I almost called out, but something stopped me. The door handle turned, and I felt a ridiculous frisson of fear. And then it opened.

I should have known locks wouldn’t keep him out. What I didn’t understand was how he could get here so fast when moments ago he was flying upward into the darkest heavens. I wondered if I could reach the knife before he did. I didn’t move.

Cain shut the door behind him, and I heard the soft click of the lock. So even on the off chance that someone could hear me scream, they wouldn’t be able to get to me in time. I didn’t bother sliding lower in the tub—in the shadowy room he wouldn’t be able to see anything, and besides, if I was about to die, modesty was of little comfort. I met his gaze across the room and waited for panic to fill me.

It didn’t come. Maybe I was past being afraid. Maybe some unnatural calm had come over me, now that the gloves were off. Except that I’d been in danger before, been in the midst of a pitched battle, and I’d been scared to death. Why was I so calm now?

He came into the room, all lazy grace, and picked up the large knife from the stool that was just out of reach. He held it up, examining it. “Are you any good with a knife, Miss Mary?”

His low, sinuous voice sent a shiver of reaction through my body. How sick was I, to be aroused by the face of death? I never would have guessed I was that perverse.

“Not very.” My voice came out a little rough, and I cleared my throat. “It was the easiest weapon I could find.”

“Against whom?” He sounded only casually interested as he balanced it in his long, clever-looking hands. Beautiful hands. Deadly hands, whether he’d been the one who’d tried to kill me or not.

“You.”

The single word sat there between us. He didn’t look surprised. “Not that effective a weapon, my sweet,” he murmured. “You’d be better off with a thinner blade. Easier to plunge deep into flesh.” He moved, so swiftly his hands were a blur, and the knife was spinning through the air, coming toward me.

I couldn’t move, watching it, mesmerized, in slow motion like an old movie as it sped straight for my heart. And then it landed in the wall just past my head with a solid
thunk,
and I let out a gasp.

“On the other hand,” he murmured, “I am very good with a knife. If I wanted to kill you, this knife would be embedded in your throat, and no one would ever know I’d been here.”

I was shaking. The room was awash with shadows, and I hoped he wouldn’t notice the water rippling
around my nervous body, but he was an observant man. He came closer, hooking the stool with one leg and pulling it under him. “You don’t have the sense of a newborn kitten, do you?” There was just a trace of annoyance in his voice. “There are a number of bathing rooms in the compound, and yet you seek out the most isolated one, where no one will have any idea where you’ve gone, where no one can hear you scream.”

“Why should I scream? What do I have to be afraid of?”

“I could make you scream,” he said softly.

“Don’t!”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t play with me,” I said fiercely.

His smile was cool, almost terrifying in the moonlight. “But, Miss Mary, that’s exactly what I want to do. I want to play with you until you scream and cry and beg.”

“You sick fuck.”

He looked genuinely confused. “Not particularly. There’s nothing that perverse about wanting to take you to bed and give you the best sex of your life. Though considering what I know about Thomas, that’s not much of a challenge.”

Now I was the one who was confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Sex. Fucking. Making you come so hard you can’t
move or cry or speak for days, and then doing it all over again. What did you think I was talking about?”

I said nothing. I felt more at sea than when I had been trapped on the rock partway out into the ocean.

His eyebrows snapped together with sudden annoyance. “For God’s sake, Martha, don’t tell me you really thought I was going to hurt you?”

I barely noticed that he’d used the right name. “It’s a logical enough assumption, since you tried to kill me earlier today.”

He grew very still. “Did I? Why don’t you explain to me how that happened, since I don’t seem to have any memory of it.”

“You know perfectly well what you did! You threw a blanket over me, smashed my head against a rock, and threw me into the ocean to drown.” Before I realized what he meant to do, he’d caught my chin in his hand, turning my face toward his, and his eyes were narrow, dangerous. He reached out and I flinched instinctively, but the fingers that pushed the hair out of my face were surprisingly gentle, the whisper of a caress as they brushed past the wound on the side of my face.

“And what makes you think I did this to you?” he said softly.

I wanted to turn my face into his palm, idiot that I was. I didn’t. “I’m a seer, remember?”

“A piss-poor one. Did you have a vision that I was out to kill you?” He didn’t sound the slightest bit aggrieved at being falsely accused. Probably because he knew the accusation wasn’t false.

“I knew. I
knew
. I was swimming in the water, out deep, dizzy and disoriented, trying to find something to hold on to. And I knew the man who had tried to kill me was still there, watching. By the time I managed to climb up on the rocks and get a good look, you were just turning away.”

There was an odd expression in his eyes. “Down by Luther’s Cove, you mean?”

“You don’t deny it?”

I wished I could see what was going on behind those opaque eyes. “Oh, no, I don’t deny it. In fact, I was down there looking for you. Someone told me they’d seen you head off in that direction, and my senses, while not nearly as infallible as yours”—the irony there was offensive—“told me I’d better check up on you. I even called your name, but you didn’t answer. You probably heard me and instead stayed there in hiding, afraid I was going to finish what I’d supposedly started.”

“Weren’t you?”

“Oh, most definitely,” he said softly. “But I was thinking about what we’d started earlier in my bed. The truth is, I wasn’t alone out there. Someone else appeared to be waiting for you to make a reappearance.”

“Who?” I snapped.

His thin smile wasn’t pleasant. “I’m not sure it’s a wise idea to tell you. You’ll probably be convinced that he was the person who tried to kill you, and he might be entirely innocent. I’ll look into it.”

“Don’t you want me to trust you?”

“You’ll never trust me, Miss Mary, and we both know it. Why should I waste my time?” He rose from the stool, wandering around the room, and belatedly I remembered I was sitting naked in the deep tub. Granted, the moonlit room was in shadows, and the milky water hid a great deal. Being naked was the least of my worries, I reminded myself. “So you came back here, convinced I was trying to kill you, and you decided to go take a bath in a deserted part of the compound. With a knife for protection, except you forgot to take it with you when you got in the tub.”