Silas (29 page)

Motherfucker. He’d come to
the sounds of the shots all right. But I’d been useless.

Oh fuck. I remembered the
way he’d touched her when we were in that van. He was going
to…
no
.

I scrambled to my feet.

Rolf turned to me. “You’re
awake, then. Finally. You have no idea how long I’ve been
waiting.”

I lunged for him.

He calmly placed the barrel
of a shotgun against Christa’s head. “Stop moving,
Drake.”

I halted, rooted in place.
Motherfucker.

Rolf gave me a bland smile.
“So, you’ve killed all of my hunter friends now. Which really
pisses me off. I have no idea what I’m going to say to their
widows. If one of them were dead, maybe a hunting accident would
seem plausible, but all of them? You’re putting me in a tight spot,
Drake.”

I glared at him. “I’m sorry
that you’re inconvenienced, Rolf. Really, I am.”

He laughed. “If I weren’t so
annoyed, I’d be impressed. Not one man I’ve brought out here has
lasted this long or inflicted the kind of damage you did. You two
even had guns.”

The guns.

He pointed. He’d gathered
them up. They were in a bundle next to his feet.

We’d lost the guns. My heart
sank.

If only I hadn’t been dark
when he showed up. If I hadn’t been dark, I could have stopped
this. He’d be dead right now. It would all be over.

But now…

Motherfucker.

“
Thing is,” he said, “I
can’t really let the deaths of the others get in the way of doing
what I brought you here to do. I’ve got to show you what it’s
like.”

Show me what it was like?

Rolf whipped the shotgun around and
pulled the trigger.

The shot caught me in my
midsection, only a few feet higher than the one I’d just healed
from.

I was thrown backward. I landed on my
back.

I struggled to get up, but I barely
managed to sit up.

“
That shouldn’t kill you,”
said Rolf. “But it should keep you from moving. I want you to have
a front row seat while I fuck your girlfriend.”

No.

I shook my head. I forced
myself up onto my knees. “Come on, Rolf, this has nothing to do
with her.”

“
Are you kidding?” he said.
“This has everything to do with her. This is about you
understanding what it’s like to have your woman stolen from you,
Drake.”

I looked at Christa. Her
face was white. Her lips had lost almost all of their color. She
was tied to the tree—her arms wrapped around it, bound behind her
back. Another rope bit into her legs. “Silas?”

I needed to stand up. I needed to stop
this.

I tried to push myself to my
feet.“She’s not… she’s not my girlfriend.” That was the truth after
all. It didn’t matter that we’d had sex. She’d made it pretty clear
that it didn’t mean anything to her.

But in a way, that almost
made it worse. Because she wasn’t connected to any of this. And
I…

I
cared
about her.

And if he
touched
her…

Rolf grasped Christa’s shirt
and ripped it open, baring her white skin. Her ribs stuck out stark
and gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. She was so thin. We hadn’t
been eating well. She looked even tinier than she ever
had.

She whimpered, squeezing her eyes
shut.

I felt sick.
“Stop.”

He laughed at me.

I was bleeding. I felt lightheaded. I
looked down at the gaping hole in my stomach. The blood in the
center of the wound was so dark, it was nearly black.

Bad idea to look. A wave of
nausea hit me, making it hard to stay upright. I teetered. I
grunted.

“
Oh, you’ll heal that right
up,” he said.

“
This isn’t the same,” I
said. “I never forced Sylvia. I never hurt her.”

He rounded on me, his
expression fierce. “Don’t say her name. You don’t get to say her
name.”

Christa’s bra was dingy
against her skin.

Rolf leered at her. He slid one of the
straps over her shoulder, uncovering her breast.

“
Wait,” she said, her voice
high pitched. “Please don’t. I swear, if you just let
me—”

He backhanded her with a
loud crack. “Shut up, bitch.”

She cried out.

The world was swimming in front of me,
greens and browns running into each other. I tried again to get to
my feet, but my muscles felt like wet strands of spaghetti. I lost
my balance. The ground leaped up at me.

Rolf stalked over to me.

I caught myself on my palms.
Pain seared through me. I groaned.

Rolf kicked me, his foot connecting
with my chin.

My head snapped back. I swayed and fell
in a heap.

He laughed again. “Just
watch, Drake.”

I needed to get up.

I looked at Christa again.
Her eyes were shining. Unshed tears glittered on her
lashes.

Shit.

I looked at Rolf.

He leered at me, and then he went back
to her.

Get up
, I ordered myself.

But my muscles didn’t
listen.

My vision blurred.

I blinked hard, struggling to see
clearly.

Rolf was wrong when he said
that the shot was only going to incapacitate me. I could tell that
now. I was going dark.

I made a noise in the back
of my throat, a screeching sound of agony. I thought if I just
yelled hard enough, I’d be able to force my body to
move.

But I couldn’t even
see.

In front of me, Rolf and
Christa were only bright blobs. I was losing consciousness. When I
woke up, I’d be healed. But who knew how long I’d be out. It seemed
to be taking longer and longer these days.

Christa cried out in pain
and fear.

I couldn’t see her. “Stop,”
I said. My voice sounded like I was trying to talk with a mouth
full of gravel.

“
Don’t worry, sweetheart,”
said Rolf. “I’ll show you what you’ve been missing.”

That was the last thing I
heard.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

I fought through the gray threads of
unconsciousness, pushing myself to wake up. Christa needed me. I
had to wake up. I had to stop Rolf.

Maybe, once he’d seen that I
was dark, he’d stopped. He wanted me to watch, after all, didn’t
he? Maybe he hadn’t done it.

My eyelids felt like they were weighted
down with concrete slabs.

I struggled to open them,
straining…

And then they burst open.

Christa was still tied to
the tree, but she wasn’t dressed anymore. Her shirt was in tatters
against her body, ripped and red stained. Her breasts were bare.
She wasn’t wearing pants or shoes.

She was bleeding.

The wound on her forehead was still
dripping blood over her face and body.

But there were more wounds
now. Her lips were swollen and broken. There were scratches and
bruises all over her torso.

She was naked, but there was nothing
erotic about it.

She only looked vulnerable and weak and
hurt.

And small. So goddamned
small.

I screamed. It tore out of me, throaty
and scraping.

That was when I realized
that I was tied up. My hands were bound behind my back. My legs
were tied at the ankles.

Rolf knelt down in front of
me. “How much did you see, Drake?”

“
Fuck you,” I
said.

“
I was balls deep in her
cunt before I looked back and realized you’d passed out. I wondered
why you were being so quiet.”

No.
No
. My stomach lurched.

I looked back at Christa.
She wasn’t looking at anything. She was staring out into space, her
eyes dull and glassy.

It reminded me of the time
that I’d pulled Sloane out of that room, all those years ago. That
had been the same look on Sloane’s face.

But with Sloane, I’d gotten
there in time. I’d stopped it. And she was okay.

I shook my head.
“No.”

“
Yes,” he said.

My body started to shake.
“I’m going to kill you,” I told him.

He gave me a sympathetic
look. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

I clenched my teeth. “I’m
going to rip you apart.”

He shook his head. “You’re
beaten now, Drake.” He tapped my chest. “That feeling in there?
That’s how it feels to lose. You lose. I win.”

I strained against the ropes that held
me. Right then, I felt so angry that I was fairly sure I could rip
them off.

But they held. The knots dug painfully
into my wrists.

I screamed again.

Rolf got up. He walked back to
Christa.

He picked up one of the
shotguns from the ground where he’d gathered them. He put it under
her chin.

She whimpered, shying away from the
gun.

“
Quiet,” he crooned.
“This’ll only hurt for a minute, sweetheart. And then everything
will be over. You want it over, don’t you?”

She convulsed.

“
Stop!
” I rolled onto my belly and
began to inch my way over the ground toward him.

He turned to me, his
expression thoughtful. “If I do it now, the fun’s done, isn’t
it?”

“
Rolf, just let her
go.”

He lowered the gun. He
rubbed his chin. “Yeah, it might be more fun to catch the two of
you again. She’s a nice piece of ass, your girl.” He
smiled.

* * *

He untied Christa, and he took the
guns. And then he strolled away.

Whistling.

I watched him go, my whole
body shaking. My stomach churned, and I was convinced that at any
minute I was going to throw up.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I started a slow, painful
crawl towards Christa, using the muscles in my stomach and my
shoulders to inch over the ground, like a centipede
squirming.

Christa slid down the tree
and wrapped her arms around her knees. She wasn’t looking at me.
She was staring out into space.

I needed to
do
something. I needed
to
say
something.

All I could do was crawl.

It seemed to take hours.
Excruciatingly long minutes in which it seemed I was making no
progress whatsoever.

But eventually, I was next to
her.

She still wasn’t looking at
me. She looked blankly out over the forest. Blood was still
trickling down over her face. It was in her hair. It was clumped on
her eyelashes. She blinked, but she didn’t wipe it away.

Fuck.

“
Christa,” I
rasped.

No response.

“
Look at me.” My voice
cracked.

Her head swung around. Her movement was
jerky and imprecise, like she was a puppet and someone else was
pulling her strings.

I looked deep into her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”

She gazed at me dully.

Fuck.

My chest felt tight, like I
was going to start crying. I couldn’t even remember the last time
I’d cried.

This wasn’t supposed to be
about her. This was supposed to be about me and Rolf.

He’d done it again. Last
time, I was the one who’d messed up. I was the one who’d told
Sylvia about his little hobby. She was the one who paid the
price.

Now, he’d hurt
Christa.

Really hurt her. She was bleeding all
over the place. She was bruised and broken. She was
shattered.

And I needed to be strong or something,
but I was pretty sure that I was falling apart too.

“
I’m sorry,” I said again,
and my voice was thick.

She shut her eyes.

This was all wrong. Rolf
deserved to pay. I’d wanted to make him pay for what he’d done to
Sylvia. But somehow, it wasn’t Rolf that was paying. It was
Christa. She was just a girl. She liked to drink beer and dance and
laugh, and this was all wrong.

I was supposed to protect her. I was
supposed to get her out of this.

But I’d failed.

Miserably.

And now…

Fuck.

I couldn’t fix this. Even if
I managed to find Rolf and kill him, it wouldn’t fix things. It
wouldn’t fix Christa. This would haunt her forever. She wasn’t ever
going to be the carefree girl that I’d met in that bar, flashing
her fake ID and flirting with me. She was broken. And it was my
fault.