Hellbent, page 9
“She sounds like my soul sister,” Fiona said.
Anton held up his pendant. “This is one of hers.”
“I noticed that before.” She moved closer to look at it. “It’s beautiful. What is it, white gold and…?”
“Diamonds,” he said. “White and yellow diamonds.”
“Super-deluxe. What’s the trick? Does a blade pop out of that one, too?”
“Nope,” he said. “It’s a flash grenade.”
Fiona had been about to touch it, but she rocked back. “You’re kidding me!”
“No. It’ll flash seven million candela and bang at a hundred and seventy decibels. The light activates all photo receptors in the eyes of your enemies for a few seconds, blinding them. The sound will deafen them for a little while, and hopefully disturb the fluids in their inner ear, impairing their balance. Yours, too, incidentally, but tough shit. Life’s full of tradeoffs.”
She gazed at it with fascination. “I can see it, now that you told me. It looks stylized to resemble a miniature grenade, but I would never have thought it was real. And covered with white gold and diamonds? That’s wildly extravagant and wasteful. Like a solid gold toilet.”
“I guess, but it’s part of the designer’s philosophy. They’re secret stealth weapons. You’d only use one as a last resort. A last resort is the only time when you truly understand how worthless and meaningless gold and diamonds and money actually are. That’s what she told me, anyway. Made sense at the time.”
Fiona blew out a breath. “Wow,” she murmured. “And I thought I had issues.”
Anton lifted the chain off his head and placed it over Fiona’s head. “Take it.”
She shrank back. “Oh, no. No way. I can’t possibly.”
“Please.” He lifted her hair clear of the chain and let it settle around her shoulders, enjoying the silky brush of it against the backs of his hands. “Take it. I got this necklace for you, Fi. I just didn’t know it until this moment.”
“But…come on, Anton!” she protested. “It’s covered with diamonds!”
“It looks fucking perfect on you. Beautiful. Dangerous. Mysterious.” He paused for a moment. “Explosive.”
She snorted. “You big flatterer.” She looked down at the heavy pendant dangling below her breasts, and cupped it in her palm. “I’m sorry, but I can’t accept this.”
“Humor me,” Anton wheedled. “It looks right on you. It feels right.”
“But I don’t feel—”
“Just for now,” he coaxed. “Just while we’re working together to fight Kimball. Wear it all the time, until we solve this. It’ll make me feel safer. Please.”
She held it up, dangling it before fascinated eyes. “I won’t accidently set it off, will I?”
“No, you have to work at it. The pull ring is tucked into this niche here,” he said, showing her the trick. “Pry it loose with your nail, and then yank it hard to pull the pin. That releases the spoon and lets the cap fire, which ignites the fuse. Two, maybe three seconds, and then bang.”
“Got it.”
Anton took a step back to admire the effect. The pendant swayed just below the soft jut of her breasts. It glowed. Like her eyes. That look they had. Lit up, switched on.
So fucking hot.
“Does it make you feel safer?” he asked.
Fiona waited for a moment to reply.
“No,” she said softly. “But you do.”
10
Fiona turned away from him, the second the words came out of her mouth.
Damn. That had sounded so clingy. Needy. Grow up, girl.
She clutched the pendant in her hand. It was still warm from Anton’s body. She kept her hot face averted and strolled along the wall, staring at his collection. Swords switched gradually to spears, and then to a sunburst of Japanese samurai swords.
Anton followed behind. “How about you?” he asked. “You said that you do online marketing, you work for yourself, and live like a hermit. Have you got any hobbies?”
“The dojo, I guess,” she offered. “I go there three times a week. I practice my fighting forms on my terrace. I jog on the beach. I devour books. Oh, and I garden. Believe it or not. Flowers and herbs, mostly.”
“Your mom was a gardener,” he said. “I remember that.”
“Yeah. She planted all the flowers around the Great Hall. I resisted for a while, because I didn’t want to be reminded of her. It made me too sad. Then someone gave me a cactus as a business gift. It bloomed one night, on my terrace, like magic, and I was hooked.”
By now she’d reached the entertainment nook, with several deep, plushy couches angled toward a huge television screen. “Check this out,” she said. “A homebody’s video fantasyland. Netflix and chill—but on steroids.”
“You’re welcome to indulge. Anytime. Do you like movies?”
“Love them,” she said. “I don’t go out much, so I tend to binge TV series, too.”
“What’s your poison?” he asked. “I’m guessing, thrillers? Horror? True crime? Mystery cop shows? Dystopian post-apocalyptic fantasy?”
“God, no,” she said, with a shudder. “I avoid that stuff at all costs.”
“So what, then?”
For some reason, she was reluctant to tell him. She was blushing, for God’s sake.
“Historical stuff,” she said defensively. “Period pieces. Comedies of manners. A really good adaptation to a Jane Austen novel is my idea of the perfect TV show.”
He looked startled. “Really?”
“Yep. An aristocratic, good-looking gentleman of the ton falls in love with a genteel young lady with no fortune. I can’t get enough of that stuff. It’s my thing.”
“Huh,” he murmured, looking fascinated. “I’ll be damned. Who’d have thought.”
“Yeah, I know. The big drama of the story is getting an invitation to the ball. The deadly danger is that she’ll tarnish her reputation. The big action scene is a quadrille with the hero on the assembly dance floor, or a run-in at the milliner’s shop with the bitchy mean girl. The love scene is when the gentlemen bows over her gloved hand in the garden and vows his eternal devotion. It’s silly, I know. But it makes me feel…” Her voice trailed off.
“Safe,” Anton finished softly.
Fiona opened her mouth to tell him that was not true. That was ridiculous, in fact. But her voice wouldn’t work. Her throat shook too hard.
Anton reached out, and took her hand. He bowed over it, slowly and deliberately, and pressed the gentlest whisper of a kiss against her knuckles. His lips were so warm and soft. That brief touch was deliberate, and seductive.
“My lady,” he whispered.
She swallowed, hard. “Are you making fun of me?” she asked shakily.
“Never.” His voice was solemn.
That inner earthquake got stronger. It would fracture her into pieces. Her eyes fogged up, and her throat hot, tight and quivering.
She must be having a stress reaction. Adrenaline crash. Only explanation.
She pulled her hand away, backing away. “Ah…well. I’m wrecked,” she babbled. “Time to get some rest. Thanks for making dinner. Or breakfast. Or whatever that was.”
“No problem.” Anton straightened up. “Sleep well. Call me if you need anything. My room’s right next to yours.”
“Will do. Goodnight. Or good morning, I guess I should say. Um…bye.”
She hurried up the stairs.
“Fi,” he called.
She turned around. “Yes?”
“I’ll leave my bedroom door open,” he said. “Leave yours open, too. And if you need me, just call. Really.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” she assured him.
That smile. God help her. She was going to carry with her into her dreams.
* * *
Anton felt incredibly restless. Even with Mitch standing guard, his battle readiness would not stand down even slightly. He sprawled on the bed, staring at the ceiling fan that the decorator had chosen for his room. His ears straining to hear Fiona breathing in the bed next door.
He was so grateful that she was breathing at all.
After a while, he got up and wandered past her open door to make sure that she was curled up in the bed, safe and protected. She was there, a slight lump beneath the covers. Her presence gave him a warm glow of satisfaction, way down deep. He knew better than to examine the feeling too closely.
He’d fucked up. Letting her run out the door and into harm’s way. Fate had given him a free one, but he wouldn’t be so lucky a second time. He had to step up his game.
He focused on his breathing, like he was doing long-range target practice. Going to the empty, no-mind place. Slowing onto the spaces between breaths, between heartbeats—
A wrenching scream tore the air, and suddenly he was airborne, gun in hand, heart banging as he bolted across the hall, ready to tear her attacker apart—
No attacker. It was just Fiona, sitting up in bed, her eyes wide and unseeing. Her tousled, fiery mop of hair hung over her face. She was locked in a nightmare inside her mind.
“Fi?” he said gently. “Wake up. You’re safe.”
She shuddered convulsively, and buried her face in her hands. When she looked up again, she could see him. She rubbed her wet eyes. “Did I scream?” Her voice was hoarse.
“Like a tin whistle.”
“Shit,” she murmured. “Sorry I woke you.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” he told her. “I don’t really sleep much.”
She smoothed her hair back, twisting in into a thick rope over her shoulder. “Me neither,” she admitted. “I have big sleep disturbances. Patti was a good sport about it, but eventually my aunt put me in a room above the garage just so they could get some sleep.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Oh, it was okay. Kind of a relief to have some privacy. College was a problem, though. Dorms and apartments didn’t work. I had to rent a detached house off-campus.”
“I see.” He leaned against the door frame, wondering if she was ready to have him inside the room with her yet. “What was the dream?”
“Just a dumb old recurring nightmare.” She hid her face, sounding exhausted. “Always the same damn thing. I swear to God, I am so sick of it.”
“Tell me,” he said.
She shot him a rueful glance. “Trust me. You don’t want to hear it.”
“I do, actually,” he told her.
Fiona looked dubious. “Come on, Anton. Other people’s dreams are boring.”
“Fi, there is fucking nothing about you that could be boring to me,” he admitted.
She laughed. “That’s such bullshit, but I appreciate where it came from.”
Her laughter broke the tension. He dared to step inside the room, and she kept on smiling. So far, so good. “It’s true,” he said. “Speaking for myself, of course.”
Instantly the air between them took on that thick, charged feeling. Fiona’s eyes slid away from his.
“So?” he prompted, laying the gun on the dresser. “The dream. Let’s hear it.”
Fiona sighed, and gave in, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “It’s about Titus. Remember him?”
“Of course.” Titus had arrived at GodsAcre along with Kimball, in a wheelchair. He had stayed the entire last year with the community before the fire ended everything. He had been mentally disabled in some way that Kimball had never fully explained. Some kind of brain injury. He could walk a few steps, in a shambling shuffle when pulled or pushed, but he couldn’t walk on his own steam, or talk, or communicate in any way. He just sat in his cheap wheelchair, wherever he was put, drool hanging off his chin.
But Anton remembered the look in Titus’s eyes, which wasn’t clouded at all. His eyes had been lucid, and desperate. Looking into them had been like listening to a person who was constantly screaming for help, while never being able to save him.
Kind of like the fire itself. The GodsAcre Great Hall, full of trapped people, screaming in terror and agony. No way to get them out.
The story of his fucking life.
Anton pushed that memory way down before it hijacked his brain and walked in and sat down on the foot of Fiona’s bed cross-legged, facing her. He caught a couple of appraising glances she sneaked at his naked torso. That was promising.
“So?” he asked her. “What about Titus? What happens in your dream?”
“You remember that I spent that whole last year taking care of him, right?”
“Fourteen months,” he said.
She looked impressed. “Huh. You were paying attention.”
Fuck yeah, he had. He’d paid minute attention to everything involving Fiona Garrett. “I remember when Kimball got there,” he said. “And Jeremiah told Kimball to pick out someone to help him take care of Titus.
“Yeah,” Fiona said. “And he picked out me.”
Her eyes were haunted. She’d spent that entire year working twenty-hour days, all alone with Titus. Spoon-feeding him, wiping his mouth, helping him to the bathroom, keeping him clean. No breaks, no days off. No more school, no more combat training. No more hiking or swimming in the summer, no more sledding or skiing in the winter. Just lonely drudgery, attending the silent, desperate, trapped Titus, day in and day out. It would have driven anyone nuts, even if that had been the worst of it.
But it hadn’t been. The worst had been when Kimball decided that Fiona was more than old enough to serve him in other ways, too.
Jeremiah had actually consented to Kimball’s whim, and before Anton knew it, wedding plans were underway. They were going to force her to marry that prick.
Several people had disapproved loudly, Anton and his brothers among them. But by that time, Jeremiah was too far gone from sanity to be reasoned with. They just got a wild, screaming rant about kids gone soft, unwilling to face adulthood, unwilling to do an honest day’s work, and if they wanted to see unfair, just wait until the Crash. They’d see what unfair looked like, oh yeah, they surely would when the world exploded into violence and chaos with death at every turn, etc., etc.
No, there had been no help from Jeremiah. It had been up to Anton and his brothers to bust Fiona out of that hellhole. At any cost.
“Tell me your dream,” he urged her again.
Fiona’s hair swung forward, hiding her face. “Remember how Titus used to call me ‘Kitty?’”
“It was the only word I ever heard him say,” Anton said.
“Well, in my dream, he can talk, and he’s calling me that. He says, ‘Kitty, where are you? Kitty, help me. Kitty, get me out of here.’ There are flames closing in all around us and no way out. They get closer and closer. And that’s it. Then I wake up.” She looked up at him, her eyes wet. “That was how Titus died, right? In the fire?”
Anton nodded. “Like all the rest of them.”
“And my mom.”
Anton placed his hand on her foot, underneath the comforter. He wrapped his fingers around her toes and squeezed gently. Hardly daring to breathe.
She didn’t pull away, so he left his hand there. “She wanted to follow you.”
“You told me that before,” Fiona said. “I just wish she’d wanted it more.”
“She was too scared of Jeremiah and Kimball to run,” he said. “It got so fucking weird up there at the end. As you know.”
Bridget Garrett had stolen painkillers for him from the GodsAcre pharmacy, after Anton was flogged. She’d smuggled them in to him. He’d been out of his mind with pain but Kimball had forbidden the medics to give him anything to dull it.
He still remembered Kimball’s sneering voice. Medicating him would defeat the purpose of the punishment, now, wouldn’t it? Let him feel it. Maybe he’ll learn something.
But there was no need to tell Fiona any of that.
“She felt bad about letting you down,” he said finally. “Things went bad so fast at the end. She didn’t adjust in time.”
Fiona made a derisive sound. “Things had been bad for me for a long while before that. But never mind. I have to let it go. She’s gone, and there’s no one left to be mad at.”
“I get you.” Anton had been furious at Kimball for years for dying in that fucking fire. He’d wanted so badly to strike that bastard down. See the light in his eyes go out.
He let the silence deepen, keeping his hand wrapped around her foot. “I could take you to her grave,” he offered.
Her head jerked up. “Huh? Whose?”
“Your mom’s,” he said. “She’s in the cemetery at Shaw’s Crossing with all the others. There’s a single monument out there with all their names on it.”
Her eyes sharpened. “Not Kimball’s name, I hope?”
“Fuck, no. We told them to keep his ashes the hell out of there. But all the rest of them are on the monument. Titus’s name is there, too, even though he couldn’t be positively identified. He doesn’t have a last name on the headstone. I don’t think anybody ever knew it. I saw that headstone when I was back for Otis’s funeral.”
“Otis,” she said. “That’s the name of the man who took you in after the fire? I’m glad someone stood up for you guys. You deserved it. All of you.”
“He adopted us legally,” Anton said. “Gave us the Trask name so we wouldn’t be stuck with Paley for our whole lives. That was a real gift. Dragging around Jeremiah’s name would have been like a ball and chain. So we’re all in mourning. You’ve got Patti, we’ve got Otis.”
“Yes, we do have that in common,” she said, staring down at his hand, slowly massaging her foot.
“I made my own memorial for them,” he told her.
“Yeah? Where?”
He held up his arm, indicating the tattoo that covered his shoulder and upper arm. “Right here,” he said. “They’re always with me.”
Fiona looked down at his Celtic cross tattoo, perplexed. “You mean, the cross?”
“Look more closely,” he told her.
She did so. He felt the warmth of her breath blooming rhythmically against his skin. The effect it had on him was predictable. “Can you see them now?” he asked.
