Burnt Offerings - Laurell K. Hamilton [82]
Cherry leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her stomach. She wasn’t wearing anything under the leather jacket. Her eyes were cautious, like she’d been disappointed often and badly.
“You’re going in after them. Why?”
Zane was sitting by her legs, back against the wall. “Because she’s our alpha.”
Cherry shook her head. “Why would you risk yourself for two people you don’t know? I accepted your dominance because I wanted out of there, but I don’t believe it. Why would you go back in there?”
I wasn’t sure how to explain it. “They expect me to save them.”
“So?” she said.
“So, I’m going to try.”
“Why?”
I sighed. “Because…because I remember Vivian’s pleading eyes and the bruises on her body. Because Gregory cried and screamed for you not to leave him. Because Padma will hurt them worse now than he would have before, because he thinks that by hurting them, he hurts me.” I shook my head. “I’m going find a bed for a couple of hours. I suggest you do the same. But you don’t have to come with me. This thing is strictly volunteer.”
“I don’t want to go back there,” she said.
“Then don’t,” I said.
“I’ll come,” Zane said.
It almost made me smile. “Somehow I knew you would.”
26
I LAY IN the narrow hospital bed in one of the spare rooms. The evening dress was folded on the room’s only chair. The chair was shoved up under the doorknob. Flimsy lock. The chair wouldn’t keep out someone truly determined, but it would give me a few seconds to aim. I’d showered and thrown the blood-soaked hose away. I was wearing just my panties. They didn’t even have a spare hospital gown. I fell asleep in a strange bed with sheets clutched to my naked breasts, and the Firestar under my pillow. The machine gun was under the bed. I didn’t think I’d need it, but where else was I going to stash it?
I was dreaming. Something about being lost in an abandoned house, searching for kittens. The kittens were crying, and there were snakes in the dark, eating the kittens. You didn’t have to be Freud to interpret this one. The moment I thought that clearly, that it was a dream and what it meant, the dream melted away and left me awake in the dark. I woke staring upwards, sheets spilled down my body so that I was nearly nude in the blackness.
I could feel my body pulsing. It was like I’d been running a race in my sleep. There was sweat under my breasts. Something was wrong.
I pulled the sheet up over me as I sat up, even though I wasn’t cold. As a child I’d thought that the monsters in the closet and under the bed couldn’t get me if I was covered. After waking from a nightmare I still reached for the sheet, no matter how hot it was. Of course, I was in a basement with air-conditioning. It wasn’t hot. So why did my body feel almost fevered?
I reached under the pillow and got the Firestar out. I felt better with it gripped in my hand. If I’d just been spooked by a dream, I was going to feel silly.
I sat in the dark and strained to hear anything before I hit the lights. If there was someone out in the hall, they’d see the light under the door. If they were trying to ambush me, I didn’t want them to see the light. Not yet.
I felt something coming down the hallway towards me. A roil of energy, heat, that played over my body like a hand. It was like a storm was rushing towards me, with that prickling brush of lightning growing like weight in the room. I clicked the safety off on the Firestar, and suddenly knew who it was. It was Richard. Richard striding towards me. Richard coming like an angry storm.
I clicked the safety back on but didn’t put up the gun. He was mad. I could feel it. I’d seen him toss a solid oak four poster king-size bed around like it was nothing when he was angry. I’d keep the gun, just in case. I didn’t like keeping it, but the moral dilemma