Wicked Hunt (Dark Hearts Book 3) (10 page)

Johann

I’d seen from the start that I was going to have to pretend to be Rudy. The moment I met this woman, Zorie, or Grimm, they would know I was a collector – a mesmer as they called it. Rudy would obey me and meet them, would do as I told him to. We’d need to rehearse. He wasn’t a stupid man and should pass as me for those first few essential minutes until I had the man safely under control.

Rudy had studied for a doctorate in pharmacology many years ago, though now he was knee deep in drug distribution in Thailand. Unlike some, he wasn’t greedy and he knew the meaning of face and honor. Honor among thieves anyway. I’d always thought that was the key to his survival.

He’d arranged a deal with Kim Phuang, a deal over and above my others. This time I’d promised to deliver what I’d before only hinted at. Power, the ability to be a collector of women. My first guinea pig would be Kim, once I manufactured a new solution from the brain and CSF of Grimm.

I had him scurrying to find me all the equipment in time for my guests’ arrival. If it was delayed, I’d simply preserve the tissue. The owners of the bodies wouldn’t be needed once I had that, though this Zorie might be worth playing with. I’d never come across a woman who could resist like she, hypothetically, could. While I waited for the centrifuges and microscopes, I could toy with her, fuck her, satisfy my needs. I was sure Rudy would help arrange any such experiments. He was good-natured and willing.

I would never agree to Kim observing any of my research, but it might be best, for safety purposes, if he watched the perimeter of the Center for Enlightenment, and the roads. Just in case someone managed to get free.

I was looking forward to this. My chair rocked lightly as I pushed my toe against the decrepit desk. A mold-and-insect eaten piece of the artificial timber fell off the bottom drawer. The place needed a clean-up in one corner, so I could fit everything. Power was already on, just not water.

The cage in the center rattled and I eyed the curled-up woman with her hair trailing through the mesh. Best to finalize her too, to make room and let me concentrate on setting up.

Mavros

Five murders. Grimm had left me with five to clean up after, and a bruised jaw, various abrasions. The man hit like a truck. I’d known he could. An ex-bouncer would never forget his trade. Seeing him fucking Zorie, while she was in a room full of dead men and tied to that post, that had enraged me. When I saw she was nailed to that post...with blood running down her arms – even in the dim light I’d seen that – my intentions had erupted into a level of anger I’d not expressed for many years.

How fucking dare he.

Well, he’d settled the might is right argument for that small moment in time.

Now I aimed to catch up with him and beat the ever-loving fuck out of him.

He’d taken Zorie too. It chilled me. What the hell was the man thinking?

After arranging what I could with my security detail, I tried messaging Nicholas. He’d predicted Zorie being kidnapped. He didn’t answer, and now I was here. His house.

It was empty.

I looked about the room. No signs of a fight. A mess in the bedroom where it seemed clothes had been taken from drawers, clothes from hangers. But was he really gone, or had someone come for revenge?

“No blood?” I asked Grant, the one man I’d kept with me.

“None, sir.” He slid his pistol back into his shoulder holster. “What next?”

The rest of the men had instructions to leave the country as soon as they cleaned up what they could and disposed of the bodies. I was flying to New Delhi myself soon. I had to leave the country or risk being arrested, but where should I go?

I had contingency plans but nothing was ever guaranteed. The police might find the bodies and they might link us to them. Getting a criminal history would be disastrous.

The tracker in Zorie’s tooth hadn’t rebooted online but the search had begun. Enough phones near her with the cross-matching app and she’d register. I’d find her then tear her from Grimm. The
bastarde
deserved nothing but contempt.

Those men had aimed to kill Zorie and there was Grimm fucking her. Why?

It had to be the mesmer bug.

I was still fucking angry with him.

“Sir?”

We hadn’t time to search this place thoroughly. “Ten minutes. Look for anything that might store information. Laptops, phones, tablets. Diaries. Then we leave.”

When the ten minutes were up, we’d found nothing, but we exited out the rear door, thinking it best, and in the grass I stepped through was a small shiny object just the size of...

I squatted to pick it up. “An iPhone.” Passworded, unfortunately.

Grant’s assessment that I’d never get anything out of it might be true, but I’d send it off to my IT guy in Spain anyway. On the way to the airport the locator app on my phone delivered an answer. I raised my eyebrows. Zorie was off the east coast of India and heading west.

How the hell had they managed that?

The locator blip faded and vanished.

I had a direction though. A country I could go to. Thailand or Burma. It might be others too.

Eeenie meanie minie mo.

Thailand.

It would do for starters.

Next time I saw Grimm, I should probably take a cricket bat.

Zorie

With all the terrorist activity in this country, I expected it to be difficult to smuggle us out. We were shunted onto a local private plane which took us to the east side of India, where it refueled then took off, heading across the sea.

The Bay of Bengal.

If anything, the ease with which this was done scared me. How big a criminal did you have to be to bribe airport officials to forget to check a private plane thoroughly for people and cargo? I wasn’t going to be anything except suspicious of this doctor, unless I saw some hard evidence, though I wasn’t sure I could tell what was real and what was manufactured data.

If I’d had a phone and the internet, I’d have googled him. They’d taken all such tech devices off us before we boarded. Another minus? It seemed as if they didn’t trust
us
.

Night had fallen by the time we reached an airport on the other side of the bay. Six hours flying time, approximately. From memory, this would be a country like Cambodia, Myanmar, or Thailand. It should be Thailand, but I couldn’t tell.

Left to myself, I’d have sought out a susceptible woman who spoke English. As it was, we were whisked past customs and taken to a car park where a beaten-up SUV awaited us, along with a driver who spoke a little English and another man who sat beside the driver. The dark green vehicle had big tires and, no doubt, four-wheel drive capability.

Grimm said nothing and had barely uttered a word on the flight, even when I tried to draw him into conversation. How silent he’d become. If this was from the infection, the change was accelerating and creeped me out. I wanted him to be the man he was and I knew all about what brain problems could do to you.

Most of all, I wanted to help him.

My hands were hurting again and felt twice their size. Grimm had applied some antiseptic and bandaged them on the plane using materials from the first aid kit. I figured antibiotics were what I needed. What I called the Panadol effect of Grimm touching them still helped, but less and less. At least my tetanus injection was up to date.

We wove and honked through traffic until the small city was behind us. Next we stopped for gas at a lonely station where bugs were plentiful, spinning in the lights or dying on your head after a bug zapper cracked them from the air. Rain fell in a curtain past the wide roof over the bowsers.

When we went to leave, the driver’s helper made a bad move. He slid in next to me in the back seat.

“No, no. Front seat, please.” There wasn’t really room in the passenger seat for three, and only two seat belts. From his grin, I gathered he didn’t care. The problem with getting too assertive with this guy, with his crooked front teeth and big smile, was that he now had an assault rifle cradled in his hands.

Either the petrol station moonlighted as an arms depot, or he’d been given it by some accomplice.

As we pulled out, heavier rain began to fall and the temperature in the jeep fell. To my right, I could feel the muscles tensing and relaxing in Grimm’s body. Alarmingly, he was muttering incomprehensible words, making a rumble deep in his chest.

Our guard chattered to the driver then leaned down as if to fix his boot. His hand slid over my leg and down to my ankle. I’d been given jeans and a T-shirt on the plane, so at least I had the thickness of denim between my skin and his hand.

That’d been deliberate and Grimm had noticed. His attention was pinpoint-focused on the guard. Though jolted by the car negotiating the road, with his forearm resting on the seat in front of him, Grimm stared as if nothing would ever budge him from his target. All light seemed lost in his eyes. Violence oozed from his pores, from the bunched muscle of his biceps.

The guard’s smile widened and he shifted his rifle.

Alarmed at the potential for something bad happening, I squeezed back into the upholstery.

The crack as Grimm’s fist punched the man into unconsciousness came simultaneously with him grasping the barrel of the gun.

A moment later, Grimm opened the door and shoved the man out onto the rain-drenched road. It was the middle of a fairly well-travelled thoroughfare. Luckily, he’d have fallen onto the side embankment. The vehicle swerved and the driver swore then braked. We ended up nose-down but intact, with the engine turning over.

When the driver started to back up, Grimm took a handful of the neck of his shirt.

After a tirade shouted into Grimm’s face, what I feared happened. The driver was pushed out onto the road and Grimm climbed into the front seat and took over driving. From behind us I heard the continued insults yelled at us by the driver, until the rain and distance drowned him out.

“That was smart,” I muttered, swallowing down unexpected nausea and a head-bursting headache. The pain from my hand and my head mingled with exhaustion. Seeing it was past midnight, that was likely not just illness. “Where are we going, Grimm? You don’t know the roads or where we are.”

The assault rifle was propped with its butt on the floor and the nasty end pointing at the roof. I nudged the barrel so it lay pointing at the corner where the back windshield met the side of the car.

“Grimm?”

No answer.

The car rocked. The rain drummed. I shut my eyes, then recalled what I’d noticed on the front passenger seat. A phone.

When I moved forward to grab it, when my hand was inches away, Grimm grasped my wrist.

My hiss and flinch drew a quick concerned look before he went back to watching the road and steering one-handed, but he didn’t let go.

When I gave up and slumped back into my seat, he released my hand then took the phone and pocketed it.

“Shit. Asshole. I could contact someone who knows where we should go, if I had that.”

My aches and tiredness were numbing my brain. I’d fall over soon. Hated that sleep you got in cars where your neck went sideways and you woke up with a jerk.

The whole vehicle looked from a bygone era – rust, peeled and cracked upholstery, along with the smell of mold. The seat belt would probably be useless and rip off if we crashed. May as well rest and wait for daylight.

I lay down on my side and let my eyelids slowly close. “Fuck you, Grimm. Fuck you. Tell me...tell me when we get to Paris.”

Zorie

Arms reaching beneath my body woke me and I raised my head to see jungle going past. Water dripped from leaves, feet tromped through the undergrowth crushing twigs and leaves, and the fresh scent reminded me of the rainforests of Australia. Though I struggled to keep my eyes open, the coziness and warmth from being hugged to Grimm’s chest had me closing my eyes again. The whoop of birds and breathing from Grimm became distant background noise. I fell asleep, dreaming of an endless rain on an endless sea.

The next time I awoke, which may have been only seconds later, the stone blocks of some abandoned building were to my left and right. We passed through a door and into a darkened room.

“Here. Rest,” Grimm said quietly. “I will get medicine.”

Medicine? For some reason his use of the rather old word bothered me. Where would he find drugs here? Blearily, I assessed my surroundings. The light seemed thin where it slanted in through holes in the stone ceiling above and the crumbled walls. No traffic sounds rumbled in the distance. No honking horns, grinding engines; there was nothing that reminded me of humanity.

“Where are we?” I croaked.

No one answered me, unless you counted random animal and insect noises, and maybe a rustling among the leaves outside the door.

Thailand jungle.

“If a snake comes and bites me, I’m never forgiving you,” I muttered.

I opened and closed my hands, wincing at the pain, worried at how stiff and big they felt.

A shiver ran through me to my very bones and I curled up on the thin blanket on the floor and found my eyes closing as inevitably as the closure of bank vault’s door.

Fuck, this was jungle. I had a fever.

There was no grit under the blanket.

He must’ve swept it first.

Blackness.

To my dismay and puzzlement the next time I was aware, people had arrived. Women in colorful clothes, dark hair, foreign words...flashes of images were revealed, like an interrupted cartoon. The women came and went, bringing baskets. Murmuring voices seemed only theirs, yet I smelled Grimm, heard him, saw the bulk of his silhouette in the doorway.

I was given something bitter to drink and was helped outside to go to the toilet once or twice, also by some woman. The next time I woke, Grimm was sitting beside me.

I cleared my throat.

His eyebrows crept upward and I felt his hand stir on my leg, where he rested it. “Better?”

“Umm.” I blinked. The room was no longer a blurred mess. The light was low, perhaps leaving us. “Is it afternoon? Same day?”

A puzzled look came over him. “Yes. Same day. You slept. A nurse looked at your hands.”

Still muzzy with sleep, with my mouth feeling dry and stuck together, I elbowed myself into a seated position. Grimm drew me to him and I let myself be arranged so I lay half across his lap.

The patting of my hair made me drowsy again.

My hands.
I remembered them, then the bitter-tasting drink.

“Where did you find a nurse?” Baskets and bags lay piled near one wall. What had he done?

“A village. I found one.”

“I remember drinking something. Antibiotics? Aspirin?”

He only nodded and pointed. One of the piles had a sheet of foil-wrapped tablets. Later, I’d need to check what that was. I was comfortable and Grimm was behaving relatively normally, compared to punching armed guards and pushing them out of cars.

He must’ve found some susceptible women at the village, including that nurse.

A twinge of anxiety wormed itself into me. Had he fucked them? Mesmers rarely seemed to have a lot of restraint where collected women were concerned.

But there had been a medical center of some sort at this village. My hands were definitely feeling better. Perhaps they hadn’t been in as bad a condition as I’d thought. Or Grimm had lost the capability to tell time. It might be more than a day.

Ugh.

Figure that out later. I was much better. The fever had gone. Another day here to recover then I’d convince him to move on. The phone – I needed to find it. If I was fast, the charge would still be enough. Pray it wasn’t passworded. My memory was almost perfect when it came to phone numbers, anatomy, and the names of my past students. Just birthdays I had trouble with. That wasn’t going to be a problem here.

Once I had that phone, I could get in contact with Doctor Rudy.

Grimm patted my hair some more.

“You need to wash.”

I
needed to? I wrinkled my nose as I became aware of his pungent male scent. Jungles and sweat went together like M’s and more M’s.

“You have food?” My stomach had awakened too and was grumbling at me.

“Yes. Some. They promised to bring more tomorrow.”

Definitely a susceptible woman then. Grimm likely knew not a single word of Thai. Wait...

“Are we in Thailand?”

“Yes.”

Okay.
“Where?”

“This...” He swept his hand, indicating the room. “Is old. Forgotten.”

“What? Temple? Home?”

“Yes.”

From the sparseness of his responses, he was forgetting how to use words. A chill made goosebumps stand up on my arms. Grimm was too big to mess around with. I wouldn’t be able to handle him if he went bananas.

God. This seemed dangerous. Tomorrow we had to leave. Once I convinced him, again...found transport, and where to go.

All the worries tried to sit on me in one big lump. I shook them off. My hands hadn’t fallen off from gangrene. Pluses, always pluses.

“Come.” He stood then heaved me to my feet with his hands under my shoulders.

Though I was dizzy for a few seconds, the room steadied. When Grimm moved to take my newly bandaged hand, I winced before he even grasped it. Carefully, he took my wrist instead.

Then he led me out through the stone-linteled, stone-framed door, past a mostly destroyed entryway corridor of sorts, where stone blocks lay tumbled higgledy-piggledy, and out into an area dappled by sunlight filtered through rainforest canopy.

High above, birds flitted across the lit spaces, and lower down were bugs. Mosquitoes too. I swatted one, left a bloody splotch on my leg and bandage then hissed at the spurt of pain in my hand.

“I have...” He frowned. “Repellant.”

“Thank god for that.” Though from stories, I knew some mozzies required antitank missiles to deter them. One could only pray the night didn’t bring swarms.

After we’d crossed a soggy patch littered with leaves, branches, and fallen flowers, we weaved through a tangle of wrist-thick vines and found ourselves beside a cliff. The cliff was composed intertwined tree roots and other vegetation. In some gaps between those, green and gray moss-covered stone was bared. The ancient carvings on the stone were so eroded and cracked, I couldn’t tell what they represented.

A shallow stream fell down the cliff face, trickling over the vines and pouring in a small shower onto an area of stone. A pool of water gathered there, before it drained away in a rivulet. As we waded into the ankle-deep pond, a squadron of brown frogs the size of my thumbnail hopped away. The water falling from the cliff would be enough to bathe in.

The pool was cool but clear, apart from twirling leaves and flakes of bark.

“Off.” Grimm tugged at the side of my navy T-shirt.

I wondered at his motivations yet felt no inner stirrings. If his intent was sexual, he’d find me ready to fall over on my feet.

When my fingers proved too stiff to take off my shirt, Grimm cocked his head then lifted me aside onto a patch of drier forest floor.

“Off.” This time he had his fingers on the lower edge of my shirt.

I looked at my poor hands, wriggling my fingers slowly. No choice if I wanted to get clean. I had a feeling this was not going to stay platonic for long.

“Fine.” I raised my arms, feeling like some ancient sacrifice. The excitement building in my groin was a bad idea. He’d detect it. Mesmers were good at that. And I could do the reverse to him, not as well, but some. The lust in his mind circled and surged, a modest storm that might turn into a hurricane within seconds. Plus his own jeans were developing a bulge.

He draped the T-shirt on a low branch, a smile teasing his lips. “Turn.”

My bra. Damn. I couldn’t manage that either. So I turned and my breath hitched and my stomach, or thereabouts, did that hop, skip and jump it does when a desirable man touches you.

Or undoes the catch on your bra.

I moved my shoulders and my breasts fell free of the cups and the bra straps fell down my arms. With a bit of wriggling, I removed the bra myself then put it where my shirt was.

Grimm was watching me, well my body really. My breasts had his full attention.

He must have some control over himself. Must. Any other mesmer would be steaming at the ears, except perhaps Mavros, who had the control of a robot when he needed to.

Ironically, this lack of grabbiness gave me hope.

He wasn’t just an animal. Insanity and ferociousness, plus a man who wanted to fuck you added up to a nightmare. The doctor’s list of possible symptoms was scary.

I let Grimm unbutton my jeans then unzip them and pull them most of the way down past my hips. When I grew frustrated with trying to get them off my legs completely, Grimm removed them for me. I had to hold his shoulder while he fiddled with the last part. I held back a giggle at this ridiculous scenario.

Now I was almost
all
naked though. With my nipples shrinking in tight, I prayed no locals used this place for anything – hunting, sightseeing, voyeuring.

Grimm was doing enough of that. He’d remained on one knee, though he placed my jeans aside.

To get to his feet, he used my legs...with a hand either side of my hips, then he halted and kissed the front of my thigh, before treating the other to a kiss too.

Fuck.

And quivering was likely to achieve exactly that – getting myself fucked.

“Grimm, Grimm,” I whispered, not sure what I meant to do with my bandaged hand resting atop his short red-blond hair. The bristles flicking beneath my fingers was an ecstasy in itself. I was losing it.

I couldn’t and shouldn’t do this now.

My panties were slowly being twisted and rolled down my thighs while he did more of the kissing. If his mouth touched my clit I’d be wrapping my now painless if stiff fingers in his cute blonde hair so tight he’d need surgery to get them off.

Something halted him. Some thought. He stood and only smoothed his hands over my shoulders then beneath my breasts so he could handle them and study them while I stood there completely at his mercy. Wanting him, wanting to tell him to do more, but dreading that.

Without saying a word, he stepped away and shed his own clothes, fast – T-shirt, jeans and boxers.

I gulped and looked elsewhere other than at his erect cock springing loose from his underwear.

What was I doing? I had this aversion to fucking him. The warehouse. The doctor’s list. Of course. Fear. I was afraid it might trigger the same beastlike behavior I’d seen in the warehouse.

Best if I pretended illness and let him do anything else but have sex with me.

As if I could stop this man if he wished to take me. I hadn’t yet unearthed my rage with him. I didn’t think I was capable. Even screwing me in the warehouse hadn’t done it.

Thankfully he merely directed me under the stream of water and stayed with me, keeping me from falling, I guess, as well as touching me when he wanted to.

The effect of that was inescapable. My arousal see-sawed from excruciating to merely bubbling.

Like the soap on his body.

We had soap but he used it sparingly. My bandages grew damp but not soaked since he did all the soaping. The bubbles stuck to my stomach and to his chest hair and made me grin.

This was some sort of dream escapade, right? As long as leeches, snakes, and random forest terrorists slash bandits didn’t appear.

“Grimm?” I glanced over my shoulder as I spoke, but his hands moved on me. I bit my lip to stop myself groaning.

The wet slide of his palms across my stomach then down to my butt was such a tease.

Soaping me?

Hell no. He was teasing me. He knew.

I had to make myself not wiggle. I couldn’t ask him anything. Not when his cock was behind me, down there, fairly begging me to put my mouth on it.

Swallowing, I turned.

“We should get dressed.” I managed to get the words past the thickness in my throat.

“Yes. Hair?”

He pressed my head beneath the stream of water while he lathered my hair with some of the soap.

Plain soap? I’d end up with bird’s nest hair. His hands wove magic. Mesmer and man.

Droplets of water meandered down over his chest muscles, being caught here and there and leaving glistening gems. Sunlight dappled his body, creating a moving work of art, I desperately wanted to lick each drop from him, run my tongue over his nipples then down past his navel to his stomach.