Endurance - Jack Kilborn [48]
And yet, Deb herself never told anyone she was going mountain climbing that fateful day. One of many rookie mistakes she’d made. If she’d told someone, and had been overdue, maybe they could have sent help.
Deb felt a stab of adrenaline kick up her heart rate.
No one knows where I am now.
Last year, Deb had lost her parents. Mom, to cancer. Dad, to grief over Mom. The tough exterior Deb wore like armor kept anyone from getting close.
So here she was, making the same rookie mistakes all over again.
I’m not mountain climbing, though.
No, I’m at a creepy inn, out in the middle of nowhere.
But this time, there is someone who knows where I am.
She glanced at Mal, who’d taken their plates and was dumping the apple cores and bread crust into the garbage can in the corner of the room. He lifted the can’s lid, peered inside, then made a face.
“You okay?” Deb asked.
“Remember when I said the meat was pheasant?” Mal asked.
Deb’s stomach turned a slow somersault. “What are you saying?”
“I think I was wrong.” Mal said. “It wasn’t pheasant at all.”
Maria’s alive.
The thought stunned Felix. After a year of hoping, despairing, and wondering, to finally have this confirmed was so overpowering he didn’t know whether to cheer, laugh, or weep.
“What have you done to her, you son of a bitch?”
Cam pushed Felix aside and grabbed John by his flabby neck. He raised the hunting knife.
“Answer me or I’ll scalp you.”
Felix reached out, ready to intervene, but John began to babble. It was a rant, mostly incoherent, but obviously sincere.
“Blue blood. It’s blue. We all got blue blood. Me ‘n my brothers. Direct line to Charlemagne. Like the Presidents. Ma says it’s too pure. Too presidential ‘n strong. We get sick. We need mixin’.”
“We bled her. Same as the others. Nice and slow.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Cam said.
But Felix thought he got it. “You need her blood.”
Cam looked at him. “Huh?”
“Transfusions,” Felix said. He stared at John. “Is that why you’re so worried about bleeding?”
“If’n I get cut, it don’t stop. Takes too long to heal up.”
Cameron shook his head. “No way. I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true,” John implored. “We don’t hurt her none. We just use her for bleedin’. And…” John’s voice trailed off.
“And, what?” Cam said.
John pursed his lips. Cam pointed the hunting knife at Jon’s face. An inch from his nose.
“What!”
“And makin’ babies,” John whispered.
Felix sank to his knees, feeling like someone had punched him. He’d been overwhelmed by emotion after hearing Maria was alive. Now, hearing why Maria had been taken—to be bled and raped by a family of psychos—it was too much to handle.
“Bullshit,” Cam said, shaking his head. “You’re lying.”
“I ain’t. I ain’t lyin’.”
“We’ll see.”
And then Cam stuck him with the knife. In his right arm, just below the shoulder.
John screamed. High-pitched and loud, like a girl. Cam jammed the sock back into the hunter’s mouth, while Felix watched, slack-jawed, as blood began to soak John’s shirt.
The giant thrashed, breaking the chair, crashing to the floor. Landing on his broken fingers made him scream even louder, and he rolled onto his side, kicking to get the rope off his legs.
Felix tore off John’s sleeve to assess the injury. The knife wound did more than bleed. It gushed with John’s heartbeat, pumping out of his body with a lub-dub rhythm.
“Wild,” Cam said. His face twisted into a grin.
Felix pressed his ruined hands to John’s wound, then spat out at Cam, “You asshole! If he dies we won’t find Maria!”
Cam stuck out his lower lip. “What do I do?”
“My tool kit! In the truck! Get the superglue!”
Cam ran off. John flipped, onto his belly, knocking Felix away. Blood soaked the carpet beneath him. He pulled the sock out of John’s mouth and implored, “Where is she?”
“Stop the bleedin’… gotta… stop the bleedin’”
“Tell me where Maria is, and I’ll stop the blood.”
“Turn…” John mumbled.
“Turn? Turn where?”
“Turnikit…”
Shit. John’s going to die without giving up where she is.
They’d used all of the rope