Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
DAMIEN
I hardly noticed the rain as I marched through a blackened forest, dodging every branch and boulder on instinct rather than sight. I didn’t know where I was going, but my body did. It navigated those woods as if it were being steered by someone else.
Someone who obviously knew where to find my girl.
I could feel the pull of her. The urgency to move faster, the almost-panicked need to see her again.
When I finally crested a hill and emerged from the woods, I was standing at the edge of a pasture, staring at a house that I knew I had never been welcome in. But she was in there— I could feel it —and welcome or not, I was going in.
As I trudged through the gate and across the pasture, I knew in my gut that something bad was about to happen. Everything felt wrong. The storm. The golf ball–sized hail scattered across the ground. The unfamiliar car parked in the driveway. Even my jacket. I went to zip it up and realized that I wasn’t wearing it. I always wore it.
The wind howled, and the rain roared, but that all faded away the moment I heard her scream.
Breaking into a sprint, I charged around the side of the house and burst through the door, hoping that I was overreacting. Hoping I’d find her standing on a chair, pointing at a spider. But what I saw was worse than anything I could have imagined. On the far side of the kitchen, with her face pressed against the floor and her bare arse up in the air, my girl was being restrained and forcibly fucked by a man who was about to die.
Something happened to me as I crossed that kitchen. A relaxing. A letting go. It was as if there was so much darkness inside of me that freeing it was easier than keeping it at bay. A sense of calm washed over me as I wrapped that piece of shite’s silk tie around his fragile neck and pulled it taut. As I glanced down at my girl’s perfect face, now badly bruised and staring up at me in shock. As her swollen lips parted and whispered my name.
Those two syllables felt like petrol in my veins, fueling my rage, igniting my wrath. Standing up to my full height, I lifted that rapist pig off his knees, napalm pumping through my muscles as I tightened the noose. And as the life drained out of his worthless body, the girl never once took her eyes off of mine. She had a front-row seat to the freak show—the monster that I’d been molded into was unleashed and on full display—and she accepted it. She looked at me like a savior instead of a psycho, and it felt fucking amazing.
But not nearly as amazing as the way I felt when I realized she was wearing my jacket.
Pain, sharp and swift, ripped through my side, and I sat up with a jolt.
“Sorry,” a feminine voice said. “You were bleedin’ through your bandage.”
With my heart still pounding, I glanced down and found the redhead kneeling beside me. Her hair was different—darker, more bronze than copper—but the way it spilled down the back of my uniform made me feel the exact same surge of pride that I’d felt in my dream seconds before.
She was wearing my jacket.
Until that moment, I’d honestly thought I was in hell—the thirst, the hunger, the incessant pain, and the hours I’d spent lying awake in the dark, listening to this girl’s muffled sobs and chattering teeth. I hadn’t been able to see her, or speak to her, or get up and walk to her, but I could hear her.
The Devil had made sure of that.
When I couldn’t fucking take it anymore, I’d rolled onto my good side and used my forearm and legs to drag and push myself, meter by meter, toward the source of the sound. The pain was so intense that I would have vomited if there’d been anything in my stomach, but the agony didn’t stop me. It only fueled me more.
Pain had been a way of life in the Kletka. They inflicted it to remind me of their power, and I fought through it to remind them of mine. For five years, pain had been my constant companion, but those five years had been nothing compared to the few hours I spent listening to that redhead suffer.
When I’d finally dragged myself over to the boulders where her tiny body was huddled in a ball, I’d collapsed at her feet, unable to see through the blinding agony I’d just inflicted upon myself. I sensed her body stiffen next to me, heard her yelp in fear, and hoped for a moment that she would shoot me like she’d promised—put me out of my misery—but I knew I wouldn’t get that lucky.
I was in hell after all.
The world threatened to spin out from under me as I pulled off my jacket and shirt and draped them over her trembling body. They were stiff with dried blood and smelled like death, but I knew they were warm. I was on fucking fire.
Once her shivering stopped, I pushed and dragged my worthless body back over to my side of the cave, bile searing the back of my throat from the pain. Panting and sweating and shaking from exertion, I crumbled against the stone wall and waited for the relief to follow. The triumph. I’d thought my act of defiance would feel like a fuck you to Satan himself, but instead, I could practically hear him laughing at me from his throne of lies.
Because silence, it turned out, was the worst torture of all.
“Ya scared the shite outta me last night,” the girl said, her head still bowed as she untied the shirt wrapped around my waist. “I thought you were gonna …” Her shoulders shuddered as her voice trailed off, and after the nightmare I’d just had, I knew exactly what she’d been afraid of.
The fact that she thought I might be capable of something like that hurt worse than being shot. It was like she didn’t know me at all, but I knew her. At least, I felt like I did. I knew her smile, even though I hadn’t seen it in this place. I knew the exact color of her eyes—even though she wouldn’t look at me—and I knew that she pursed her lips when she was thinking or trying not to laugh.
“You shouldn’t have done that, ya know.” She kept her eyes down, speaking to herself as she doused what looked like a pair of pink cotton shorts with Jameson. “Draggin’ yourself across the cave like that. You were finally startin’ to heal, and now, look at ya.”
Something wasn’t right. The longer I watched her work, the more differences I began to notice between this girl and the one in my dreams. Her hair color was wrong, her attitude, even the way she smelled—salty instead of sweet, like seawater. Maybe she wasn’t the same girl after all. Maybe she was an imposter, created by the Devil himself just to torture me.
I didn’t know where I was, who I was, or if I was alive or dead, but I knew better than to trust a fucking soul, human or demon, who wasn’t her .
And this girl was not her.
I hissed through my teeth as she pressed the whiskey-soaked fabric against the gaping hole in my side.
“But thanks anyway,” she muttered. “Ya probably have no idea what I’m sayin’, but … what ya did last night was … really nice.”
Then, she glanced back and forth between the shirt that had been wrapped around my waist and the fabric she was holding against my wound. “Em … shite. How do I … I need a third hand.”
I placed my hand on top of hers, wincing from that simple movement, and the girl gasped in surprise.
“You understand English?”
I nodded, gazing at her downcast face, the thick lashes fanned out over her freckled cheekbones, the way my sleeves swallowed her hands as she worked. She wasn’t my girl, but she was just as beautiful.
It felt like a trick.
Sliding her fingers out from under mine, she set to work, tying the bloodstained shirt from the day before around my waist to hold the new bandage in place.
“What’s your name?”
I opened my mouth to tell her, but nothing came out. It was as if my lips and tongue had forgotten how to form words. I could at least hear them in my head again. That was an improvement. My confusion was beginning to lift, but …
I groaned in frustration and scrubbed a hand over my broken fucking skull. I couldn’t remember what had happened. My entire life was just … gone.
“It’s okay,” she said, placing a hand on my bare shoulder before turning her attention to the wound on the side of my head.
Her touch was so gentle. No one had touched me like that since … well, I couldn’t fucking remember when. But it made something in my chest throb worse than the head wound she was dabbing with alcohol.
“There was a woman in our town,” she said, still avoiding my gaze, “the wife of a fisherman. She slipped at the harbor and hit her head so hard she couldn’t remember a thing for days. Not even how to talk, other than curse words, which was pretty funny ’cause she was such a God-fearin’ woman. They thought she might have brain damage, but come next Sunday, she was back at church, singin’ in the choir like nothin’ had happened.”
The pain subsided as I closed my eyes and tried to process what she was saying.
Her fingertips caressed my jaw, turning my head to the side with the lightest of touches. “You could use a few stitches—can’t help ya there—but once the swellin’ goes down, ya might be okay.”
A head injury. Memory loss. Was I alive then? Was this place real? Was she?
“Do ya know how ya got here?” Her voice turned icy as she pulled away from me. Sitting back on her heels, she picked at the label of the whiskey bottle in her hands, avoiding my stare.
Dread seeped into my veins as I shook my head slowly.
“You’re in the Russian Navy,” she replied, her voice hard and accusing. “Ya showed up here in a warship disguised as a cruise ship. Then, ya bombed my entire town, my house, my …” Her voice trailed off as she swiped a tear away from her scowling face. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like you care. I just need ya to hurry up and get better so you can get the hell out of my cave.”
Fuck.
The Navy.
The ship.
The shelling.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Images from that night assaulted me rapid-fire, but the only thing I could focus on was a pink welt on the girl’s cheekbone. It was just like the one I’d seen in my dream. Someone had hurt her. Someone was going to die.
Or maybe they already had.
Fuck!
As she turned away and walked back to her side, I wanted to tell her she was wrong. That I did care. That I’d tried to stop it. That I was sorry. That I’d do anything to go back and make it right. But all that came out were grunts and coughs and the word fuck , clear as a bell, just like she’d said it would be.
If she was an imposter created by the Devil to torture me, it was fucking working. I was losing her again, and there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t want to drag myself back over there when she’d just finished patching me up from my last dumb attempt to move. I couldn’t speak to her. Could I write?
I looked around and found a full bottle of water and a granola bar that she must have brought over when she’d come to dress my wounds. The sound of quiet crying pierced my soul as I tore the label off the bottle and stared at the blank underside, waiting for letters and words to form in my mind.
“Fuck,” I muttered again, picturing her face buried in her hands on the other side of that boulder while I sat there and did nothing.
Her face. That was it. I could see it in my mind like a photograph. Every line, every freckle. I just needed …
Looking around, I noticed a smear of blood on the shirt she had tied around my waist. Gritting my teeth, I dipped my finger beneath the bandage and exhaled in relief when it came out red.
I didn’t have to speak. I didn’t have to spell. All I had to do was close my eyes, and there she was. My finger swooped across the label with no conscious thought from me. Two closed eyes, brow furrowed in pain. Two full lips, turned down at the corners. Two freckled cheeks—one tearstained and one bruised. A heart-shaped face. A wavy mane of hair, bronze instead of copper.
Wrapping the portrait around a small rock, I said a silent prayer and tossed it across the inlet and into the cluster of boulders she was hiding behind. My injuries screamed in protest over that single motion. When I saw that my gift had landed where I wanted, I dropped my head back against the wall and waited.
I heard the sounds of pebbles rustling, a plastic label being unwrapped, and then nothing.
The girl stopped crying.
And I was back in the silence. Again.