Questions raced through my mind, basic ones like who, how and why. Then she spoke.
“Save me,” she breathed.
It was just a whisper really, one I could easily have convinced myself I’d imagined and yet…it was so real.
“What?”
“Save me,” she repeated, just as softly.
I took a step toward her. I was both curious and afraid, but I was also moved by her plea. She nodded her head in encouragement and I took another step then another. I could see that her lips had lifted at the corners into a tiny smile so I took yet another step.
And then I saw the rest of them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
There, in the shadows beside the girl, were other people. They were all deathly pale. All their mouths were open wide in silent screams and pleas that I couldn’t make out. Most of them were horribly disfigured, like they’d seen terrible battles and lived, though their wounds had never healed.
Among them, I saw a man with a wide cut on the left side of his head, the skull lying open grotesquely. I saw a woman that had apparently been tortured. Her clothes hung in tatters and, through the gaps in the material, I could see bloody knife wounds and chunks of flesh dangling. And then there was another man, one who looked familiar somehow. One side of his face was severely burned, which made him particularly difficult to identify. In fact, one entire side of his body was charred to the bone. It looked almost as if half of him was perpetually in shadow.
They were all like that, mangled in some way—bloodied, beaten, broken, burned, ripped and torn.
And then I smelled them. A stench like nothing I’d ever smelled before—except on the man in the woods. Only this was worse. Bile rushed into my mouth and I backed away. When I did, they became agitated and started reaching for me.
At first I couldn’t feel their touch, merely a cold sensation where their hazy forms passed over my body. Then the burned man reached for me. And I felt it. Light as a feather, the fingers of his intact hand grazed my cheek. It was almost tender. And then I began to feel them all.
They were touching my arms and my face, stroking my hair, clutching at my clothes. With every step I took backward, they took a step forward. The faster I moved to escape their hands, the more frantic they became to pursue me.
Then I felt something at my back. I turned, unable to stifle my gasp when I saw more of them behind me. They were all around, emerging from the shadows, trying desperately to get to me.
I spun in a circle, looking for a way out, an escape route. I saw none. Without even realizing it, I had backed myself into a corner in the garage.
Adrenaline flooded my body. My hands shook with it as I raised them, palm out, to ward the people off.
As they crowded in on me, as my fear grew, their touch became more pronounced, more real, no longer dancing along my skin like a light breeze. I could feel their fingernails digging into the flesh of my arms, their hands pulling painfully at my hair. I heard the seam of my robe’s sleeve rip beneath the frantic fingers of a woman who, by the looks of her tenuously attached head, had been nearly decapitated.
I swung at them, but it was like trying to catch the wind. There was nothing there. I thrashed my arms wildly, but it didn’t stop them; they kept closing in on me. If anything it seemed only to make them more desperate, angry even. Their faces and half-faces contorted into expressions of frustration and rage. Hunger. Their teeth gnashed as they bit and snapped at one another. Then they started biting at me, lunging at me. And I couldn’t stop them, couldn’t defend myself.
A vise grip squeezed my chest, seizing my lungs, as panic set in. It stopped me from taking the deep breath I needed to scream. I opened my mouth, but no air could move past the lump of terror in my throat. My heart hammered in my chest, so hard I could hear it in my ears.
Fear, unlike any fear I’d ever known, coursed through me. My muscles twitched with it. My head throbbed with it. My stomach trembled with it.
And then, like the windows of heaven opening up behind me, light poured into the darkness.
And they were gone.
I whirled to see Derek standing under the garage door, his arms raised above his head holding it open. I thought I’d never been happier to see another person as long as I’d lived.
On shaking legs, I ran across the garage and flung myself at him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and burying my face against his neck. He only staggered back an inch or two under my unexpected assault before he caught himself.
Derek just stood there and let me hang on, my feet dangling half a foot off the ground. Then finally, hesitantly, I felt one of his arms come around me and pull me closer.
I don’t know how long he held me that way. Long enough for me to calm down I suppose. He began to sway gently and then, little by little I became aware of him. I felt his hard chest and flat belly against mine. I felt the friction of his thighs brushing mine. I felt the heat of his strong hand where it was splayed across my back. And then, with my face still pressed against his neck, I tasted his skin on my lips, warm, musky and a little bit salty.
The relief and gratitude, the comfort that I had felt initially, were slowly replaced by…something else. At first it swirled around inside my head. And then, like blowing on an ember, it began to warm me more and more and more until I was on fire.
It was like nothing I’d felt before. My skin was hot and tingly. Something pleasant and exciting bubbled in my belly. Heat radiated from Derek’s fingertips where they grazed my rib cage. Electricity crackled in the air around us.
I could hear him breathing, more rapid and shallow than before. I felt his chest rise and fall more quickly beneath me. Blood pumped faster through the vein in his neck; I could feel it beating beneath my lips.
He loosened his arm around me and I loosened my hold on his neck, my body slowly sliding down his until my feet touched the ground. My flesh felt branded with the imprint of his body, like it had been burned onto me everywhere we’d touched.
I lifted my eyes to his. The swirling silver was darker tonight, smoky, clouded with something I hadn’t seen before. I felt it in the growing heat that was consuming every fiber of my body. It permeated my skin and coursed through my veins like lava. Even as close as we already were, I felt the need to get closer still, to feel his skin on mine, his lips on mine and…something more. It burned inside me, deep in my belly, hot and breathless.
His hair wasn’t bound tonight. My hands were still fisted in it, resting at his nape. I flexed my fingers, the long strands flowing like silk between them. I watched his eyes drop to my mouth and my lips began to throb, aching for the touch of his.