“Marisol!” he screamed. “Don’t shoot! It is Assail!”
He put his hands up in the air, but it wasn’t as though she could see him. “It is Assail!”
She stumbled to a stop, but like a good girl she kept that gun up as she blinked myopically. “Assail …?”
Her voice cracked with a despair that changed him forever: As with the vision of her, he would hear that tone frame the two syllables of his name for years yet to come.
In his nightmares.
“Marisol, darling Marisol … I have come for you.”
He wanted to tell Ehric to kill those lights, but he didn’t know who else had been in there with her and whether anyone would be chasing after her.
“Marisol, come unto me.”
The way her hand shook as she brought it to her head made him want to go to her. But she seemed unsure of what was reality and what might have been a phantom of her imagination. And with that gun, she was as dangerous as she was vulnerable.
“Marisol, I promised your grandmother that I would save you. Come unto me, darling one. Come unto my voice.”
He held his arms out into the darkness.
“Assail…” As she took a step forward, he realized she was limping. Badly. But then, of course some of that blood had to be hers.
“She is going to need medical care,” he said aloud. Damn it, how could he get her treated?
If she died on the way back …
How much of that blood was hers?
As she took another step and one more, and still nobody emerged in her wake, he had some hope that not all of what covered her was her own.
“Come unto me.” As he heard his own voice break, he could feel Ehric shooting him a shocked look from the SUV. “My darling…”
Marisol moved that shaking hand over to shield her eyes, and for some reason, that brought the fact that she was naked into full focus.
His throat stung so badly he could not swallow.
Fuck this.
Assail shoved his gun into his belt and rushed forward to meet her more than halfway.
“Assail … is it really you?” she whispered as he came close.
“Yes. Please don’t shoot—come unto me, darling one.”
As she let out a sob, he grabbed her and hauled her up against his chest, the muzzle of that gun of hers going right into his sternum. If she pulled that trigger, she would kill him outright.
She did not.
With a sob, she gave herself over to his strength, and he held her up from the ground as she crumpled. She weighed nearly nothing against him, and for some reason, that terrified him even more.
Accordingly, he allowed only a moment of communion—and then he needed to get her safe.
Swinging her up into his arms, he turned and ran for the bulletproof Rover, ran into those headlights as if they were a heavenly safety zone.
Ehric and his brother anticipated what he wanted to perfection. They jumped out of the Rover and left open the backseat doors—whilst they removed Benloise from the rear and kept that man away from sight.
Marisol did not need to know of his presence.
Placing his female in the back, Assail broke out the sleeping bag he had packed, along with the water and PowerBars he had brought for her. Covering her nakedness, he held on to her as she fell into a fit of trembling.
“Marisol,” he said as he pulled back. “Eat. Drink. Ehric, my cousin, shall take you—”
Her nails bit into his forearm even through the heavy sweater he wore. “Don’t leave me!”
He touched her beautiful face. “I must needs work herein for a moment. Things must be attended to. I shall meet you on the road.” He wrenched around. “Ehric! Evale!”
The two males came over—and for a moment, he considered driving her away himself.
But no, vengeance needed to be served, and he was the one to balance the scales.
“My darling, look unto my relations.” As he eased back so they could lean in and show their faces, he was thankful they had his exact coloring, and that their features were so like his own. Indeed, the three of them had been mistaken for brothers. “They shall carry you unto safety and put their lives before your own. I shall join up with you anon. I shall not be long, I swear to you.”
Her frantic, harried eyes bounced back and forth as if she were trying desperately to hold herself together.
“Go,” Assail hissed, glancing at the facility. “Go now!”
And yet he found it impossible to turn away from his Marisol. She had been abused and her state of undress suggested that—
Ehric gripped his upper arm. “Be of ease, my cousin. She shall be treated as our precious sister.”
Even Evale spoke up for once. “She will be well in hand, cousin.”
Assail had a moment of connection with the males, words of gratitude clogging his throat. In the end, all he could do was bow unto them.
Then he had to lean back into the SUV. “I shall not be long.”
On an instinct, without being conscious of deciding to do so … he kissed Marisol on the mouth.
Mine, he thought.
Forcing himself to refocus, he grabbed his backpack, shut the SUV’s door, and stepped away. Ehric, bless him, was careful to turn the vehicle around so that Benloise was not illuminated in the headlights—and then the Rover sped down the uneven path.
Oh, how he wished that lane had been paved. He wished it were a f**king highway with a seventy-mile-an-hour speed limit. Or better yet, that they had come via helicopter.
After the headlights had disappeared, he took out a headset and put it on, clicking on its miner’s light. Then he went over to Benloise, grabbed him by the duct-tape straps about his ankles, and pulled him across the snowy ground to the open entry.
Dropping the legs, he palmed his gun and pointed it at the man.
“Just to make sure you stay put,” Assail ground out.
Pop!
Benloise jerked in tighter, trying to protect his gut—too late. The bullet was already in there and leisurely doing its job: While painful and debilitating, intestinal wounds took their own sweet time accomplishing their goal.
Although Assail didn’t plan on keeping the bastard waiting long for his death.
Striding into the dwelling, he kept his weapon up and his eyes sharp.
What he found inside gave him pause.
Directly by the open door, a severed human hand lay discarded, as if its purpose had been served and it was no longer of value. The body it had been attached to was right there as well—no, that corpse had two hands … although no face to speak of.
So there was at least one other dead inside.