“Shit,” he mumbled. He looked up at his older brother and back to my shoulder. I could see the indecision warring inside his open eyes. “Vaughan, take Tyler back to the Suburban and meet up with Nelson.”
“I’m not leaving you.” Vaughan glanced over his shoulder at us, and his expression showed absolute resolve.
“Reagan’s bleeding,” Hendrix told him quietly as if saying the truth louder would encourage the Feeders to hurry up. “Get Tyler back to the car and meet up with Nelson.”
Defeat flashed across Vaughan’s face, and his shoulders sagged momentarily. “I’m not leaving without you.”
“I didn’t tell you to, Asshole. Just wait for us. We’ll be coming in hot.”
Vaughan cracked the smallest smile but then went straight back to super-commando-mode. “Be careful.”
“Was planning on the opposite, actually,” Hendrix grinned.
“See you soon, Brother.” Vaughan grabbed Tyler’s hand before either her or I could jump into the decision-making portion of this conversation, they were off. She glanced back at me and we shared one of those slow-motion moments in which a thousand words were spoken and a hundred promises made.
Hendrix pulled me into motion again and we started running in the opposite direction of the getaway vehicle. With Matthias’s men behind us, a horde of Feeders in front of us and our loved ones struggling to get to the car unscathed, there was only one way we could run. And so we did.
My clumsy feet tripped over fallen branches or suctioned into the damp, muddy ground. With each step I grew more frustrated and fearful.
The woods were dense here and we were forced to squeeze through trees and around shrubbery. My shoulder rubbed against the bark, leaving a trail of blood for the Feeders to follow. Pain and misery rebounded inside my brain, threatening to pull my focus away from survival. Hendrix’s hand squeezed mine and reminded me what I needed to fight for.
Thankfully, we hadn’t killed Matthias’s men, so we still had plenty of ammo on us. But I wasn’t sure it would be enough for the entire horde of Feeders if we were fighting them by ourselves.
And there were the rest of Matthias’s men to worry about.
“Will you remember how to get back to the Suburban?” I panted out when we had been running in the opposite direction for several minutes.
“As long as I can get us back to the highway,” he answered on a heavy breath.
That was good enough for me.
We pushed our way through a particularly dense patch of trees. The branches scratched our skin, pulling out more blood and destroying what little scabs my shoulder had produced. The Feeders were gaining on us. I could smell the scent of death wrapping around us and hear their guttural groans echoing off the trees.
I could practically feel them salivating for us.
The cool autumn air burned inside my lungs, my nose dripped with snot from the unwanted exercise and my mouth had gone uncomfortably dry.
In other words, this sucked.
On the other side of the bramble, we put our feet out and ran straight into a group of Matthias’s men. We stared at each other, both sides equally speechless. They recovered first and lifted their guns toward us.
Hendrix pushed me back into the bush and we dove out of the way as a spray of bullets followed us. We moved too fast for me to have taken in the group of men or how many of them there had been. My brain screamed, “A lot!” But other than that, every single detail had been lost.
Every detail but one. Cold, gray eyes piercing through cracked, black glasses.
Kane.
I covered my head and cried out against the gunfire. Hendrix picked me up and helped me start moving again as more gunshots followed our escape. They couldn’t see us clearly in the thick woods, but it would only be moments before they caught up again.
I sniffled against my personal problems and forced my body to keep up with Hendrix. I would not be the reason we got caught. I wouldn’t let myself slow us down or put us in any more danger. We had to find a way out of this.
More gun shots fired in the distance, the loud crackling of bullets echoing loudly in the compressed area.
“They found the Feeders,” Hendrix wheezed. I knew he was right, as the shots weren’t too far away but were definitely pointed in a different direction than our escape route.
“Good,” I whispered, praying that he was right. There were other possibilities of course. They could have found Nelson, Haley and Gage. Or they could have found Tyler and Vaughan. But I refused to think those thoughts or believe anything other than the Feeders and Matthias’s men had crossed paths.
We continued to shove our bodies through the trees, ignoring the branches that slapped us in our faces or reached out to snag our clothing. We would deal with injuries later. It was more important to save our lives than our skin.
Although, one could argue that these days those two things went hand in hand.
The trees thickened even tighter. I felt as though there were a thousand demons chasing us; each intending to murder us, each intending to end our lives and send us from this earth. They breathed down my neck, they clawed at my back, and they licked at my heels. Panic clouded my thoughts and fear pummeled through me, bruising my insides, wounding my heart.
Hendrix pulled me behind him, reluctant to let go of me, even with the narrow passages pushing us apart. I clung to him until my fingers ached with the pressure and my arm tingled from loss of blood. But I would not let him go, not for anything.
Brighter light streamed through the wall of greenery just steps ahead of us. The warmth of the sun seemed to call to us with whispers of hope and freedom. If we could just get out of these trees… if we could just get a little bit ahead…
Hendrix was the first through the wall and it’s difficult to explain what happened next. One second we were holding hands on solid ground, running for our lives and making progress. The very next second, we were flying apart, falling through the air for endless moments.
My brain struggled to comprehend what was happening. My arms flailed, a scream built in my throat and panic turned into something so much stronger, something that did not own a word it was so deeply and permanently set in my bones.
And then I hit the hard ground, my body crumpling in on itself. I bounced and tumbled all the way down a long incline. My bones crashed into rocks or solid earth, my insides felt dangerously jostled and the entire time I was blinded by dizzying movement.
Sure, blurred scenery whizzed by, but my mind couldn’t keep up and logical thought failed me.
Finally, my body came to rest at the bottom of a ravine. I lay on my back and looked up at the edge of the cliff we’d literally fallen off with morbid astonishment.
I felt amazed I’d survived the fall. I felt even more dumbfounded that we walked right into that one- right off the edge of the earth.
I slowly lifted my head and looked around. Each movement of my body was painful but I didn’t think I’d broken anything. Or, if I had, the pain of a broken bone was somehow less than the screaming agony of my shoulder.
When I was confident my spine and head were as fine as they could be considering the circumstances of how I got into this awkward position, I sat up and surveyed the area around me.
I had kicked up a lot of dirt on the way down and there was a haze of it clouding the air around me. I coughed through it, determined to find Hendrix. He was probably waiting impatiently for me to join him.
Except he wasn’t.
He was lying face down in the dirt… not moving.
Chapter Four
“Hendrix.” My voice was a breathy prayer of desperation. “Hendrix?” This time I sounded a bit more hysterical, a bit more pleading.
I crawled over to him, ignoring the shooting pain in my own body. My hands dug into the soft earth, clawing up clumps of mud and grass as I went.
I almost fell on top of him as I reached out for him. I struggled to turn him over and cradled his head in my lap. Tears fell from my
eyes, no doubt streaking my filthy face.
“Hendrix.” I trembled and quaked, begging for him to answer me.
In a lucky moment where I happened to be holding my breath, I heard him groan quietly. He wasn’t dead! I had been too panicked to even check for his pulse. Besides, the thought that he could have actually died was so incomprehensible to me that I hadn’t been able to even entertain the idea. But hearing his voice, feeling the warmth of his body beneath my dirty fingers gave me the greatest sense of hope and relief.
I bent down and kissed his forehead. I needed to wake him up; I needed to get us moving again. I couldn’t tell by looking at him if he had any other injuries besides the one to his head that caused his unconsciousness. I was afraid to start jiggling him around in case I damaged him further.
Plus, I needed a moment to feel him alive. I needed to breathe in this moment and let my heart relax before my brain exploded.
“How touching,” a voice drawled from the other side of the ravine.
My eyes snapped up to meet Kane’s cold gaze. I shivered again and this time the fear was from a different source, but no less threatening. The anxiety was back in full force, infinitely more intense. A fall down a rocky hill was bad, but it wouldn’t continue to hurt Hendrix.
I couldn’t say the same thing about Kane.
I scrambled to my feet and stood in front of my unconscious boyfriend, willing to do whatever it took to protect the man I loved most in this world from the enemy in front of me. Kane’s gun dangled casually at his side, but his body was so tight and rigid I thought it could shatter to pieces if I tapped it just right.
“You’re alive,” I accused him.
And he looked very much alive. His dark hair was a little longer than it had been the last time I saw him and wild from the run. His jaw had a day’s worth of scruff on it that darkened his appearance in a metaphysical way. One lens of his glasses was cracked down the middle and I idly wondered if he had trouble seeing out of it.
“Didn’t you get my note?” A cruel smile tilted his lips.
“Don’t you know if I got your note?” I countered.
His smile broadened into something a little more genuine. “If I wanted to shoot Hendrix right now…” His eyes flashed to the man lying unmoving behind me and he gestured with a flick of his gun in that direction. “How would you stop me?”
Fear sluiced through my chest as I glanced around frantically for my gun. My hand felt worse than empty, worse than helpless. Metal glinted at me from up the hill a ways. I’d dropped it in the fall.
Damn it.
In a false show of bravado, I took a step toward Kane and tipped my chin in defiance. “I won’t let you shoot him, Kane.”
He took three steps closer to me, closing the distance between us by feet and miles all at the same time. His gunmetal gaze hit me with the force of worlds colliding and his strong jaw ticked with some unnamed emotion I couldn’t identify.
Did he hate me?
Did he love me like in my dreams?
Did he want to hurt me like I hurt him?
“What will you do to stop me?” His voice dropped to a low rumble and my heart thudded in time with his harsh consonants.
“Whatever I have to,” I promised.
“Take the bullet for him?”
There was no hesitation in my answer. “Yes.”
“Fight me?”
“If I have to.”
“What if I said you had to come home with me? Would you come? Would you go with me if it meant you could save him?”
Somehow, without either of us realizing it, we’d drifted even closer together. Only a few inches separated us now. I could feel the heat of his body, smell the wind that mixed with his sweat and innately masculine scent. I could see the crack in his glasses clearly. I could see the stiffness in how he moved his undoubtedly still-recovering body.
Hoping to distract him, I brushed my fingers over his forehead and moved his tousled hair back from his face. He held my gaze until the pads of my fingers touched his skin and then as if he couldn’t help himself he closed his eyes and leaned into my touch.
“Last time I let you this close, you tried to kill me.” He sounded tortured… haunted by the memory.
And I couldn’t blame him.
“I’m glad you didn’t die,” I told him. My hand cupped his jaw as if by a decision I didn’t consciously make. I didn’t understand this soft spot I had for him. I hated him as much as I wanted to protect him. I believed he was as evil as I believed he was capable of redemption. And every one of my conscious thoughts condemned him while my unconscious ones whispered promises of a better man.
His eyes opened slowly, and he pressed a tender kiss against my open palm. “You’re hurt.” He had significantly softened, and his fingers brushed over the blood-soaked sleeve of my hoodie. “Is this why the Feeders came?”
I nodded.
“Here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the cream I saw him use with Miller.
I looked down at it, afraid to believe he would hand it over freely. “What is it?”
“Antibiotic cream,” he told me. “It will help.”
I took it from him and slipped it into my pocket. Lifting my eyes to his again, I regarded him curiously. “Thank you.”
“I’m going to take you home with me now, Reagan,” Kane said firmly.
An odd feeling of calm washed over me at his threat. Maybe because he spoke so gently or maybe because we’d been through this a couple times by now, and I always escaped. Either way, I looked up into that fathomless gray and shook my head. “I’ll run, Kane. I will always run.”
“To him?” his attention flickered to Hendrix for a moment before returning to me.
“No,” I whispered. “Away from you.”
He winced at my confession and dropped his head to my good shoulder. His hand slid to my waist, and he held me against his muscled frame. “Say it one more time.”
“Say what?”
“My name.”
My fingers pressed down on the barrel of his gun so that it bobbed a little in his hand. “Will you let me go?”
He nodded, and I felt the movement against my skin. “This time.”
“Promise?” Not that his promises meant anything, but I was bargaining my way out of this. I was sure his men were engaged with the Feeders, and that was why we were sharing this poignant moment alone, but either faction could show up at any moment. Zombies or Matthias’s men. Both meant death for us. And on top of all that, Hendrix was hurt, and I needed to get us home.
I needed to get us away from Kane.
“I promise.” He turned his head so that his cheek lay against my shoulder, and his lips tickled my neck. He sounded so small then, so broken. The vulnerable female inside me wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around his neck and hold him. I wanted to kiss away his fears and nightmares and promise him that he would be alright… that he would make it through this.
But I was also a cold-blooded killer that fought daily to stay alive. That person, that very strong, very resilient person inside me, saw Kane as the true threat to my existence that he was.
But that person also knew I needed to use Kane’s weakness to get out of this alive.
To get Hendrix out of this alive.
I bent down and let my lips brush against the sensitive spot beneath his ear. “Kane,” I whispered seductively. This would probably come back to bite me in the ass later.
He jerked me against him. His body was hard and firm. He pressed the planes of his tall form and the rigid lines of all his sculpted muscles against mine, letting his body heat seep and sink into me like a palpable thing that would infect me until I choked on it. “Again,” he demanded.
“Kane,” I murmured and placed a soft kiss on the fleshy part of his ear. He shivered and leaned into me.
Just as I feared, the distant sound of gunshots began to move closer. I jumped when the killing echoed around us, but Kane stayed unmoving as if we were in a
n isolated bubble of sanctuary that would remain safe from the bloodshed and Feeder gore.
I forced my body to still under him, knowing fighting him would only provoke him.
After a few more moments he drew a line across my collarbone with his nose, taking my shirt and hoodie with him so that he had access to my bare skin. When my clothes didn’t move like he wanted them to, his hand glided up my body and pulled on the two collars until most of my chest, above my breasts, was exposed. I held my breath while he leaned in and kissed me just above my left breast, right where my heart was. His lips were wet and possessive; claiming that vital organ, possessing what was so inherently mine to keep or to give away.
And then he released me. I stumbled back without his strength to hold me up. His eyes were cold again, his body as rigid as ever.
“You know that this is not over,” he stated.
“I know.”
“You know that I’m watching you.”
“I know.”
“You know that I will come for you soon.”
This time I was not docile. “You know that I will fight you every moment until you give up.”
His jaw ticked once. “I won’t give up.”
“Then next time, I won’t miss.” And I meant it.
The gun shots were right above our heads now. They sounded impossibly close. We were going to have to fight in a couple minutes; I just didn’t know who we were going to fight with or how we were going to fight them.
“Go, Reagan.” Kane nodded toward my left. “Your vehicle is that way.”
“And I should trust you?”
“This time,” he repeated his earlier threat. “And you should also run. Fast.”
I glanced back at the still-unconscious Hendrix. I had a fleeting feeling of despair until Kane raised his gun and fired off a single round directly above Hendrix’s head. Hendrix jerked to life at the explosion so close to him and jumped to standing. He stumbled a little bit as he regained his equilibrium but eventually righted himself.