The Wolf, page 13
She was going to protect them… as he did his very best to save her life.
* * *
It went without saying that if Luke hadn’t shown up when he did, Rio would have been dead by now.
That was the thought that she used to distract herself from the waves of burning agony that lightning’d through her muscles and bones. The trip down the stairs was incredibly painful, each rushing step a jarring reminder of everything she had been through.
So Luke had saved her three times, as it turned out.
Maybe she was a cat, though. And still had six left.
When he bottomed out by the front door, Luke paused and turned left, turned right. Courtesy of her iron grip on the gun, the muzzle swung around to both of the open apartments. No one came out of the darkness on either side.
“We’re going out the back door,” he said.
And then the pain started up again as his long strides carried them both down a narrow hallway that had sheets of vinyl wallpaper peeling off from the ceiling and trash scattered to the sides of the corridor, a Litter Sea parted by those who had created the problem.
The back door had a small window set about five feet up from the floor, the opaque glass crisscrossed with chicken wire. Luke kicked the thing open—and right outside was an old two-door Cutlass sedan. Navy blue. With a pinstripe.
He went around and unlocked the passenger side with a key, the old-fashioned way. Then he had to tilt her down so he could pull the handle, and there was a metal-on-metal squeak as he opened things.
“I’ll be as careful as I can—”
“Just drop me in there so we can go.”
Rio tried not to pass out as he set her in the seat, but her body was as limber as a brick wall—and felt just as liable to break apart under sufficient pressure. As her lips peeled off her front teeth, she closed her eyes and leaned out, in case she threw up.
Maybe that drug was still in her system.
She felt the gun get taken from her hands, and she was more than fine with letting it go. Breathing in and out of her open mouth, she tried to focus on something to keep herself conscious… keep herself alive—
That cologne of his. She trained all her attention on the way that Luke smelled—and whether it was the placebo effect or there actually was some kind of magic in whatever he’d aftershave’d himself with… eventually, she was able to bring herself back from the brink.
Like he knew she was ready to get buckled in, Luke carefully pushed her shoulders into position so she was properly in the seat.
“I’ll get the belt.” Luke’s voice, so deep, so level, was right in her ear. “Just keep breathing.”
Good advice, she thought to herself.
After he pulled the strap over her torso and clicked it into place, he closed her in and she watched him with blurry eyes as he bolted around the front of the car. When he had to pause and flipped the set of keys around in his hand, she made a move like she was going to reach over and pop the lock for him. But there was no lifting her arm.
At the rate her body was refreezing in its current position, she was going to have to be surgically removed from this car.
Fortunately, Luke did not have her problems with mobility. He all but pile-drove himself in behind the wheel, and the easy way he tossed the pack into the back seat without any effort was not the kind of thing she’d ever thought she’d envy. As soon as the engine turned over, he threw them in reverse and stomped on the gas.
“Don’t hurry,” she mumbled as they jerked back. “No accident.”
“Right.” He K-turned at a more reasonable clip. “Try and sleep. We’ve got a ways to go.”
“Where.” Finishing the sentence was too much like work. “Kidnapping me?”
His head whipped around. “What the hell?”
“Guess I’d be in trunk, then.” She tried to smile at him, but all she could manage was to turn her head in his direction. “Right?”
“That’s not funny.”
“Little funny.”
“No, not at all.”
And then they were off, traveling toward the river at only slightly faster than the thirty-mile-an-hour limit. She watched him instead of the street. He was bearing down on the steering wheel like he might rip it off its column, sitting forward as if he could get them to wherever they were going quicker if his face was closer to the windshield.
As the pain ramped up, and she felt that horrible retching sensation threaten the back of her throat, she moaned. “I think… need a doctor…”
“I know. I’m going to take care of it.”
She was going to tell him to just take her home, but that wasn’t safe. Mozart was going to find out sooner or later that his hitman hadn’t just failed. He’d been eaten. And with only one bloody body at the scene? Her old “boss” was going to guess she was still out in the world, somewhere.
With all kinds of information on him.
“Where dog come from,” she heard herself say.
When Luke didn’t respond, she figured he had no better idea than she did. Or maybe she hadn’t said that out loud? She just couldn’t seem to connect to the world, the agony in her body the kind of thing that so completely overwhelmed her senses, it was hard to break through its haze and connect to anything outside of herself.
The Northway’s Trade Street on-ramp came up way too quickly—and she suspected she had lost consciousness for a minute or two, the angle of the car rousing her as they hit the incline and accelerated. When they flattened out and headed north, she took a shuddering inhale.
“Where… going.”
Luke glanced over, his face grim in the glow of the dashboard. “It’s safe, I promise. Try and rest, okay?”
“Three times,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Saved me… three times.”
He went back to staring out at the road ahead. “And I’ll do it a hundred times more, if you need me to.”
His words were spoken so softly, she wasn’t sure if she’d heard them right. If she had? Well… then he was a criminal with at least some kind of a moral compass, wasn’t he.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
About forty minutes after Lucan finally got off the Northway, he pulled the stolen Cutlass onto an overgrown drive and proceeded a hundred and fifty yards off a county road that had had less traffic than a goat path.
As he went along, he kept checking on Rio. She was looking… dead. Her skin was gray, her mouth lax, her body motionless except for the kind of rapid, shallow breathing that was not a good thing. Over the course of the trip, which had been longer than it should have been because he’d had to make sure they weren’t being followed, she’d settled against the doorjamb, her torso tilted away from him—though her face had stayed angled so that if she opened her eyes, she could see him.
And now he was worried he wasn’t going to be able to get her out of that seat. Get her the help she desperately needed.
The lane ended at an aluminum-sided farmhouse that had seen better days. Pulling into a single-vehicle, open-air carport, he hit the brakes and killed the engine.
She didn’t move.
“Rio?”
At the sound of his voice, her eyelids twitched and she groaned, but then she seemed to sink back into sleep. Or maybe it was a coma.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Just hold on.”
Getting out, he shut things back up so that she’d stay warm, and walked over to the rear door of what he intended on being their temporary refuge. Unfortunately, the very modest two-story house was just as rough as that apartment building—and he had a thought that someday, he’d take her someplace nicer.
Which, considering where he was starting from, might include locales with such exotic luxuries as running water, reliable electricity, and central heating.
The back entry into the kitchen had an overhang that was barely hanging on, and he tested the door’s lock. When it held firm, he turned his shoulder to the panels—
And broke the fucker open.
The air that wafted out was as cold as the night, and not moldy at all—which meant there were so many windows broken, there was always plenty of breeze going through the rooms. He’d been inside once before, back when the prison camp had taken up its new residence. He’d roamed the landscape constantly back then, his wolven side desperate to get out and move under the moonlight after so many decades of forced, subterranean confinement. He’d always come back to that sanatorium, however.
The Executioner had started right off with the leverage shit.
Then again, when you had levers to pull and stuff you had to get done, you didn’t sit on your ass if you wanted to create an empire.
Lucan stepped into the kitchen. The house had been abandoned sometime in the seventies, he was guessing—because the rusty, avocado appliances and mustard-yellow linoleum floor were in the style that was popular right before he’d been thrown into the prison camp. The windows and walls were a matchy-patchy of faded sunflowers, and without any furniture to speak of, it was like a museum exhibit on rural, aspirational living that had been robbed.
A quick check through the other four rooms on the first floor yielded nothing. Quick walk around of the five-room second story was the same. He wasn’t surprised; his nose had told him up front what it took his eyes six minutes to confirm. But he wasn’t really interested in what was aboveground.
The cellar door was under the stairs and it was shut solid, yet opened just fine. As he looked down into the darkness, his hand went to get inside his jacket—but then he realized he wasn’t wearing his own clothes. And it wasn’t smart to use a phone for a flashlight, anyway. Tracers happened, which was why he’d turned his burner off.
Going over to the cabinets and drawers, he didn’t expect to find anything, but there was a surprising collection of crap left. By a stroke of luck, he found a candle, and lit it with a match from a box marked “Joe’s Steak Shack.”
Okay, fine, the candle was actually the number “5” and it had dried frosting on its foot, the forgotten marker of someone who was that age. Or 15. 25. 35…
Pinching the bottom of the number between his fingers, he was careful going down the rough staircase.
Well… what do you know. There was a candelabra on a stand right at the base, as if the owners had had their electricity go off a lot and wanted to be prepared. Using the 5, he lit the cobwebbed four-arm and felt like Vincent Price as he moved the anchored flames around.
Fabric, everywhere. And tubs, which he assumed were for dyeing. Also long tables that looked like they’d been built in the cellar from assembled wood.
“Pretty fucking perfect.”
Putting the candles down, he gathered up bolts and bolts of fabric, and shook them out to make a soft bed. He chose behind the stairs as a location—so that if anyone descended the steps during the day, Rio’d have time to hear it and be ready to shoot whoever it was.
She would be safe here—at least that was what he told himself.
And he wasn’t going to be gone long.
At least not while it was still dark out.
* * *
The next time Rio woke up, she was stretched out on a bed in a candlelit room. As she went to sit up, the world spun around so she laid back on the mattress.
Except it wasn’t a mattress. It was… heavy sheets. Layers and layers of—no, fabric, like you’d find at a Jo-Ann’s, all kinds of different patterns, weights, and colors.
Totally disorientated, she tried to see beyond the halo of golden light thrown by the grouping of candles. Where the hell was she—
It all came back in a waterfall: The white-haired man with the switchblade coming at her as she was bound and gagged on the floor. The dog attack. Luke freeing her and carrying her out to a car. This abandoned house, which she had a hazy recollection of being moved into.
Now she was here, in the cellar, on this bed of multi-colored fabric—
Voices up above. Now footsteps that made dust fall from the boards over her head.
A door opening and a beam of light piercing down the steps ahead of her. “Rio, it’s me.”
At the sound of Luke’s voice, she shuddered in relief—and became aware that she’d lifted up a gun and pointed it at the open-board staircase in front of her.
The reality that he hadn’t left her undefended meant that he, and anybody with him, did not intend to hurt her. But considering how much rescuing he’d been doing over the last little bit, did she really still doubt his savior act?
Then again, old habits of self-protection died hard.
“I’m here,” she said in a rough voice.
“I have help.”
There was a pause, and then she saw his legs at the top of the rough wooden stairs. She knew they were his because he was wearing those strange, tight, too-short black pants—and through the open frame of the stairs, she watched him take things one step at a time. Was he injured?
No. He was helping someone in a tan-colored robe, someone who seemed to have bad balance.
It was slow going.
And when he was finally on the concrete floor, he put out his arm for whoever was with him and brought them around, into the light… oh, so it was a limp, the person had a limp, a bad one—and their whole head and body were covered, nothing showing of the face, a mesh drape hiding the features.
“She’s here to help you,” Luke explained.
Rio glanced at him, needing to refresh everything she knew about his face, his body, his energy. In the flickering light, he looked ferocious and his body seemed huge. Next to him, the robed figure was slight and came up to his pecs.
It was a woman under there, Rio thought.
“Will you allow me to examine you?”
The voice was, in fact, female, and also smooth as silk, and for some reason, Rio pictured whoever was under there as having long, dark hair.
“I got hit on the head,” Rio said on a mumble.
“So I may examine you?”
The accent was odd, a mixture of French and something Romanian. Not that she was a linguist.
“Sure.”
She didn’t even bother to ask whether the woman was a doctor or a nurse. Or a vet. Anything was better than nothing, and it was not safe for her to be seen at so much as a doc-in-the-box. Mozart had resources everywhere in and around Caldwell—
“You’re a nun,” Rio blurted as she put the gun aside. “That’s what you are.”
As the woman lowered herself down onto the edge of the fabric pile, she relied heavily on Luke’s arm—and then addressed him. “You will leave us now, and allow me your flashlight. Thank you.”
Luke hesitated.
“You will leave us,” the woman said more sharply. “You are not her mate. It is improper for you to attend to her. Go.”
After a moment, Luke looked at Rio. “I’ll just be upstairs.”
“It’s okay,” Rio said. Even though she feared she was lying to him.
“And you must needs get her some food and drink,” the nun ordered. “Now. She is dehydrated and requires nourishment.”
Luke did not seem like the kind of guy who took orders. But he skulked off for the stairs like he’d been yelled at by an elementary school teacher.
After his heavy weight clomped up the steps, the robed figure’s mesh-covered face turned to Rio. But the woman didn’t say another word until Luke had closed the door.
“Tell me, female,” she said gently, “what happened to you.”
Rio’s eyes watered. And she intended to speak… but she suddenly didn’t have any air in her lungs.
“Oh, female. I am so sorry.” A soft hand took her own. “Just catch your breath, we are not in a hurry here.”
“I’m okay.” As Rio breathed in deep, she winced. “I really am.”
Was she? She didn’t know for sure. Or maybe at all.
“Where do you hurt?”
Everywhere. “My head is the worst. They hit me with a gun, I think. At least twice.”
Determined to be a good patient, even though there was nobody around with a clipboard to judge her performance on convalescent compulsories, she went to sit up. The pink-and-white fabric draping her to her chin fell down—
Revealing her cut-open t-shirt and the red line where the tip of the switchblade had cut into her.
Rio stared down at herself. And then with shaking hands, she drew the two halves together so that she was covered.
“You are going to be all right,” the woman said sadly. “At least physically. I shall make sure of that.”
Between one blink and the next, Rio found herself back on the floor of that apartment, tethered tight between the stakes, that shiny silver blade going—
The trembling took her over fast, her whole body caught in a flood of flashback adrenaline.
“Come, let us attend to your head,” the woman said after a moment. “We shall start there.”
Or at least Rio thought the words were something like that.
She suddenly couldn’t hear very well over the screaming inside her skull.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lucan stood in the empty, antiquated kitchen, staring out a dirty window, trying not to think about what was happening down below. As time stretched to an unbearable limit, and he felt like he was either going to punch something, explode into a shower of cartilage, or put his head through the wall, a set of headlights pulled into the long drive and came down to the farmhouse.
He palmed up both guns and looked down at the weapons. One was from the prison camp, signed out to him for use only against humans in the drug trade. The other was from the pack he’d lifted from the apartment. He knew how many bullets were in the former—didn’t have a clue about the count in the latter.
Going over to the door, he back-flatted against the wall and looked out. As the headlights were killed, his wolven eyes adjusted.
A hatchback was right up to the rear bumper of the stolen Cutlass, and when Mayhem got out with three pizza boxes, Lucan whispered a prayer to the Elder Wolf, even though he didn’t believe in it. Her. Whatever the fuck it was.
