Chapter 10 #2
He eyed me suspiciously but didn’t say anything as he got up and picked a handful of pine needles off the nearest tree.
My hands fumbled nervously while I rubbed the pine needles between two stones to create a paste.
Grayson’s eyes bored into me through the whole process, and I wished he would just look away for two seconds so I could breathe again.
He took the stone and applied the paste to my foot and ankle.
I watched as he got another bandage from the first aid kit and started wrapping it tightly around my foot.
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
He frowned but didn’t look up. “I don’t know. Nice...” he said the word as if it was an abomination, “is not in my nature.”
“Are you not nice to Gemma and Hunter then?” He had to be. Or maybe he was overestimating their feelings for him. Maybe they weren’t so much his friends but only tolerated him for the money.
“It’s different. They’re family.”
Okay then. “Is Hunter your brother?” They didn’t look alike at all.
“Something like that.”
I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. He was so cryptic. His answers left me with more questions. But what else could I expect from a thief? “Why do you insist on being so mysterious? You’re killing me soon anyway.”
He rolled his eyes at me then fastened the bandage with a clip. “And you’re my hostage. There is no reason for you to be so nosy.”
I sighed. He was so frustrating. Or maybe it was the fact that I didn’t know what to expect from him next that frustrated me. Would he smile at me? Would he kill me? Or both those things at the same time was also a possibility.
Grayson got up and started a fire. He then proceeded to pitch the tent.
While he was busy with that, I decided to start with the food.
I took the pot out and two of the dehydrated food pouches.
It said mutton casserole on the label. My face scrunched up at the thought of it.
I hoped it tasted better than it sounded.
“What are you doing?” His sudden loud tone made me jump.
“I’m starting on the food,” I declared, confused and a little shaken.
He pointed a finger at me. “Don’t you fucking dare. I don’t trust you with the food.” He raised a brow at me. “That’s how you did it, right?”
I couldn’t help the smile that crept onto my face.
“Yeah, I thought so. Now drop it.”
I did as he said, dropping the pouches back into the bag and putting my hands up in mock surrender. I still couldn’t get rid of the smile. It felt good knowing that I bested him.
He looked at me curiously. “What did you use?”
I contemplated whether I should answer. “An answer for an answer. If Hunter’s not your brother, then what is he?”
He sighed, letting his head fall back; clearly frustrated with me. At first, I thought he wasn’t going to answer, so I added, “I’ll take your secrets to my grave.”
Grayson’s eyes sparkled at my dark humour. “His parents took me in when I was young. It was those blue flowers, wasn’t it?”
I chuckled. I liked that I had some leverage over him. “Yes, amongst other things.”
He frowned at me. “What else?”
“Why do you rob banks?”
He glared at me, not liking this game. “We don’t just rob banks. Now what else did you use?”
I lifted my chin in defiance. “No, you haven’t answered my question.”
He sighed and pulled his hand through his hair. “It’s fun, that’s why.”
I gaped at him. “You’re lying! There’s no way you just do it for fun.”
“I’ve answered your question. Now answer mine.”
If he was going to lie, then so would I. “The other ingredient was unicorn poop. Freshly harvested.”
We glared at each other. His mouth quirked up before shaking his head, coming over to start the meal. He added water into the pot and placed it into the fire.
“I wasn’t lying.” He leaned back against a stump, placing his hands behind his head.
“We don’t do it for the money. I do it because I enjoy the challenge.
We steal gold, art, jewels, artifacts…” he trailed off.
“Whatever the wealthy keeps locked away in their most secured safes.” His lips curled upwards.
“It makes for an exhilarating experience.”
That couldn’t be true. But looking back, he’d been very unserious in the bank, making an awful lot of snide jokes. “It sure as hell wasn’t fun for me.”
His smile faded. He dropped his arms and eyed me. “It’s not our usual MO. Contrary to what you might think, Princess, we’re not in a habit of taking hostages.” He gave a quick, half smile.
I didn’t know what to think. “So, why did you go through with it? Why not just leave the gold… and me?” I added.
“It was personal.” His mouth was set in a grim line. “The fucker whose gold it was, was moving it the next day. It was our only chance.” He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “But you’re right. We should have waited. I could have found another way.”
“What did this man do to you?”
His eyes flashed but softened when he looked up at me. “Wasn’t this supposed to be an answer for an answer?”
I smiled. “Fine. It was Jimson Weed. If you mix enough Vervain and Jimson Weed, you get an incredibly strong sedative. You didn’t stand a chance.”
He chuckled. “Clever girl.”
That made my cheeks warm up, just like my insides.
He opened the food pouches and emptied them into the pot. “So, you know a lot about plants, hmm?”
I nodded. “Been fascinated by them for almost all my life. You should try it. At least my hobby doesn’t involve the police.”
He looked at me devilishly. “It has the potential too.”
I scowled at him. Right. “Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t try it.”
We ate in silence, listening to the beautiful sounds of nature while we still could. When we were done, Grayson went to wash the dishes in the stream.
While eating, I had found the crow in a nearby tree, watching us.
I had kept the last bit of my food for him and placed it onto a piece of bark.
I wobbled over to the tree and positioned it on the lowest branch of the tree.
“You are such a brave boy,” I cooed to him.
“Thank you for watching out for me. I hope we can be friends.”
He ruffled his feathers, and hopped down to the food, accepting my offer, before flying off with a loud caw.
“The water’s not that cold. Would you like to go wash up?” Grayson asked as he walked back. “I’ll go get some more wood before its dark,” he added quickly.
That did sound nice. “Yes, thank you.” I smiled up at him.
He rummaged through the bag, taking out a clean shirt, and handed it to me. He pressed his hand deeper into the bag but frowned. When he pulled it out again, he had the photo in his hand.
My heart stopped.
He unfolded it. I watched his face go ashen, then red with rage, as he stared at it.
“Where did you get this?” He still stared at it.
I swallowed hard. “In… in the bottom drawer.”
“You had no right.” He closed the photo. His voice as calm as the centre of a tornado.
“Who is…”
He was looming over me in an instant, my jaw gripped tightly between his fingers. “You had no right,” he sneered through his teeth.
“Grayson…” I breathed, shock sucking the air from my lungs.
He turned and stomped off into the forest.
I was shaking. What had just happened? Why was he reacting so badly to the photo? Did he not like to be reminded of what he did?
I bristled. He acted like I was the one who committed a crime.
I waited a half an hour for him to come back so I could tell him what an unstable asshole he was, before I gave up and took my clothes down to the stream.
The water was delightfully, sparkling clean.
I took extra time washing the mud from my hair, which wasn’t an easy feat without getting the bandages wet on my foot.
By the time I was done, the sun was low.
Gathering some firewood seemed like a good idea, since Grayson was still nowhere to be seen.
No fire at night was asking for trouble.
The last rays of the sun were gone when I dropped the last bundle of wood next to the fire.
I made myself comfortable, as close as possible to the flames, to keep the creeping cold away.
I cursed Grayson for leaving me alone with my own thoughts.
Not even the moon was there to keep me company.
It was still out of sight, hidden behind the trees.
There was a constant flash of images and feelings from yesterday, running through my mind. I’d been suppressing it. It doesn’t matter what Mom says, I just couldn’t face it.
What happened to Digger? Nothing good, I hoped. He was a slimy piece of shit. “My wife left me a few years ago. Said I loved other women too much.” The sound of his voice swilled through me. How those words had suddenly come to mean something else. Maybe I wasn’t his first victim.
“Stop fighting. You’ll like it, I swear.”
I pressed my fists over my eyes. I couldn’t get his voice out of my head.
I couldn’t stop reliving how it felt when he pulled my pants down; how I could feel his hairy stomach scratch against the skin on my back; how his hand struggled with his belt against my bare backside; the stench of his sweaty body filling my nostrils; and the feeling of utter helplessness when he finally had it undone.
I couldn’t stop him. I could do nothing.
I had been defenceless. I had been helpless.
A broken cry escaped me. Then another. And another. I let it consume me. Mom was right, as always. I had to face it. The horrible things that had happened to me. And the horrible things I narrowly escaped.
I felt arms wrap around me and hold me tight. I turned to him, to his familiar scent and pressed my face into his chest. Grayson held me while my mind replayed it again and again. And again.
When my crying subdued, he brushed the hair backwards that had stuck to my face from all the tears. His eyes were pained as he looked down at me. “I’m so sorry, Ava. For everything. It’s all my fault.”
The way he said my name, left a trail of warmth through my body. “Not all of it.” I had thought the opposite just last night.
“I’m the reason you’re in this fucking forest in the first place,” he echoed my thoughts.
I looked up at him. His hair was wet, glistening in the moonlight. “You saved me.”
He shook his head. “If I’d been there a few minutes earlier…”
I chuckled darkly. “Yeah, that would have been nice.”
He wiped another tear away. “I’m sorry, Ava.”
“Don’t be. If you didn’t show up…” I looked away. It took me a few seconds before I could trust my voice again. “Thank you, Grayson.”
I decided to be brave, while on the subject. I had to be sure. “Can I ask you something?”
He looked at me wearily but nodded once.
“When you drugged me that first night, did you…” I trailed off.
“No, Ava. I didn’t touch you. Not like that.” He lifted my chin so I would look at him.
“But I had different clothes on.”
He shook his head, his eyes piercing mine.
“Gemma dressed you. I couldn’t get to all your cuts with the amount of clothes you had on, so I asked Gemma to dress you in those pyjamas.
I know it was an invasion on your body, and I’m sorry about that, but I needed to make sure you weren’t bleeding out on me somewhere.
Gemma was with me the whole time if you’d like to ask her about it. ”
I believed him, but… “But why drug me then?”
“You were in shock. I could see you losing it. It was the easiest way to calm you.”
“Or you could have just been nice to me.”
He shrugged. “I’m not a nice person, Ava. And the whole situation pissed me off. You’re a fucking thorn in my side, Princess. I don’t know what to do with you.” He got up, pulling a hand through his hair, then threw a log on the fire.
It was dark already. There was a rustling sound in a tree close to us. We both pretended not to notice it. It called to me—my name whispering through the trees. It almost sounded human. Almost.
Grayson took a subtle step closer to me but didn’t dare acknowledge that he also heard it. He threw another log on the fire and took the opportunity to put himself between me and the thing up in the tree, closest to us.
I quickly whispered a prayer to Nyx while drawing her protection symbol in the dirt. “Goddess Nyx, I pray to thee, protect us from harm, seen or unseen. Cloak us in your night, to keep us from malefic sight.”
After another minute, the rustling moved further away. The tension in my shoulders eased a bit. That was very close.
There were a lot of stories about what these things were, and how they came to be. Almost just as much as the reasoning people came up with to deny their existence.
The story I chose to believe was the one where the gods created these beings to keep people away from something hidden deep within the heart of the forest. Or maybe they were an experiment by the gods gone wrong.
Or maybe they were all just a hallucination, caused by some unknown fungus’s spores in the air we breathed.
“I think it’s time we go to bed,” Grayson said calmly, but I could hear the tension in his voice. He pulled me from the log, careful not to step on the symbol I drew on the ground and smiled down at me. “Whatever that is, it seemed to work.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You don’t look like the religious type.”
He lifted me and carried me to the tent while smiling. “But thank whatever god that you are.”