Blood of the Wicked (15 page)

Chapter Sixteen

T
ime stopped.

Everything froze, still and quiet in a sudden silence that swallowed the world.

Silas shook, buried in ice. Bitterly, bone-achingly cold. Was he alive?

Was he dead?

It didn’t feel easy. Hardly peaceful. But a lot less bloody than he’d ever imagined it.

Cold. Wet. But not alone.
Jessie
.

Silas jerked to consciousness, already choking on a breath full of icy water. His lungs burned, throat achingly raw as he expelled it. Hacking, struggling, he fought the frigid waves pouring over the dashboard.

The cab filled steadily, listing to one side. Already up to his aching ribs, the waterline rose by persistent increments. No time. He flailed in the dark, searched for her.

“Jessie?”

He couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear anything but the terrible roar of water and the blood rushing in his ears. He needed to see. Needed to know that Jessie was okay. “Hang on,” he rasped, hoping like hell he wasn’t talking to dead air.

He felt along the crumpled steering wheel, teeth chattering with cold. It took him three tries, but he finally found the lever for the interior lights and seized it in desperate relief.

A watery glow illuminated the dark, spilling incandescent light into the cab.

It highlighted Jessie’s body, pale and luminous in the dark. She hugged the dashboard, her face a crimson mask shining in the filtered light. She didn’t move. Didn’t open her eyes. Silas’s heart twisted, panicked.

“Jessie!” Heedless of the pain, he wrenched himself free of the tangled wreck of the steering wheel and seat belt. The rising water sloshed over them both as he placed shaking fingers against her neck. “Come on, sunshine,” he coaxed hoarsely. “Come on—there. Yes, God, please.” A flutter against his fingers. Or did he imagine it against his numb skin?

Shit. Shit!

Though it tore every curse he knew from his frozen lips, Silas managed to reach across the cab and pull the latch on his door. Busted ribs. His knee throbbed like he’d jammed it in the fall. Hypothermia was on the horizon.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered, he’d push through the pain. She had to get out. He had to get her to dry land, get her warmed up. Bandaged.

Bracing himself against the seat, he jammed both feet against the driver-side door and kicked out. It stuck, pushed back as the water forced it shut. Gritting his teeth, he kicked once, twice. Three times, harder, and his knee screamed in fury and pain. More water sloshed over the shattered window.

The truck jarred, tilted further. “Fuck, no, fuck me swimming, God,
come on
.” Out of options, he turned toward the only exit. Grabbing the edge of the windshield frame, holding on as tight as his numb fingers could manage, Silas leveraged his body through the narrow gap. He knelt on the hood, shoved his head and shoulders back through to gather Jessie’s listless, unresponsive body in his arms.

She was bone white in the fading light. Her lips edged blue. Silas cradled her close, guided her gently through the rapidly narrowing fissure. Head, shoulders, waist. Legs.

When she was free, bobbing awkwardly against him, he pushed away from the truck that had carried him through fourteen years of missions.

The old girl deserved better than a watery grave.

But then, so did Jessie.

One arm wrapped tightly around her chest, her face supported above the waterline as best as he could, Silas turned slowly in a circle and gauged his chances.

Slim to astronomically bad.

Freezing water. Darkness too thick to penetrate even with the faint headlights sinking beneath them. No sky to guide him this deep under, and no wind.

Closing his eyes, Silas cast a fervent, mental prayer.

Let her be okay
.

Let her be alive.

If she wasn’t okay, then damn it, Silas would make her be okay, just let her be alive.

Shivering, he buried his lips in her wet hair.

They’d come too far to end it like this, hadn’t they?

Silas took a deep breath and struck out for what he desperately hoped was shore. Any shore would do.

But it didn’t take long before his muscles started to burn. He scissored powerfully through the water, diagonal to the current shoving him deeper into the trench, and thought burn was good. Burn was motion. Heat. He just had to hang in there.

The Old Sea-Trench had two sides. He’d hit one.

He just hoped there was a way out when he did.

Silas didn’t know how long he swam, or at what point his extremities lost all sensation. He pushed on, pushed harder, desperately conscious of Jessie’s terrifyingly still body cradled in one arm. Unconscious. Dying?

Dead?

Christ.
No
. He wasn’t going to play that game. Not while the strength leached from his muscles. Frozen water curled deep inside his bones, eroded his willpower, his energy, but he’d be damned if he gave up now. Gave in to the cold. The deep.

The fear.

A bulky silhouette loomed out of the dark. The interminable rush of the fast-moving water broke with a splash, and something hit the water beside him.

Silas jerked back, lost his rhythm, and sank like a rock. The freezing river closed over his head, Jessie’s head.

Drowning.

He struggled, stroked back through the current. His ears full of water, locked under pressure, he twisted with his precious burden. A flurry of bubbles swirled around him, eddies around a dark current, and he knew he was too slow.

From the black, icy currents, hands grabbed at him, hooked in his jacket. He tried to fight back. Couldn’t get his brain to send the command as pale skin flashed in front of him. Dark eyes.

Red hair?

Or blood.

Jessie bled. He had to get to Jessie. Protect her.

The surface of the water split above him. Droplets rained down, fat and thick, and he suddenly found himself hanging ass-out over the side of a metal, flat-bottomed boat.

Sweet, cold air burned in his chest. Gasping, choking, he tried to push himself back out over the edge. Back into the water. “Nng!” A croak of sound. He tried again. “Jessie,” he managed. Where was she?

Something caught his waistband, hauled him fully into the boat. It rocked wildly, side to side, and Silas fell awkwardly onto his wounded shoulder. The pain lanced his brain into blistering gibberish.

“Good gracious.” A woman’s voice. Strong hands grabbed him by the hip, pulled him flat. “Don’t move. Your lady’s fine, she’s right next to you.”

Silas wiped water from his burning eyes. “Jess,” he rasped. “Jessie, Christ.” She lay splayed beside him, shades of white and blue. Her lashes spiked over her cheeks and blood oozed sluggishly from a gash at her temple.

Trembling, shaken to the core, he gathered her into his arms as the boat rocked. “This isn’t fine,” he growled over her head. “This isn’t— Jesus, sunshine, hang on.”

If the woman at the back of the boat was at all intimidated by him, she didn’t so much as flick him a gesture to show it. She stood shrouded in the shadows of the trench, expertly using a long oar as she guided them along the current. What he could see was little more than a silhouette.

Her voice, Silas realized, was weathered. Firm. “She’s had a nasty knock, but she’ll live if we can get her to warmth,” she said. “Tuck yourself around her. Keep her warm.”

Warm? Christ, he couldn’t even remember how to spell the word. Still, he tried. Pulling her fully into his lap, guiding her thighs around his waist, he wrapped both arms around her and held on fiercely. He rubbed her back, her arms, trying to process any friction through her wet clothes. Any heat.

“Think warm thoughts,” he murmured into her cold hair. “Heat, desert sands, tropical beaches. Sun. Fuck, sunshine, you’re warmth all by yourself. The way you walk, the way you smile.”

Water splashed against the side of the boat. Shuddering with cold, Silas tore open his jacket, wrapped it snugly around them both. “The first time I saw you,” he muttered against her temple, rubbing his hands up and down her back. Long, fast, hard strokes. “I thought you reminded me of sex and whiskey. Hundred proof, all the way.”

Sex in five-inch heels. Silas let out a hard breath. He hadn’t been wrong.

“Damn it, sunshine, I can’t think of anything warmer.” He rested his chin on the top of her head, closed his eyes. Listened to the splash and dip of the oar and the rough whisper of his palms on her back.

Slowly, subtly enough that Silas thought he imagined it, the darkness faded. It slipped under his eyelids, delicate light that blossomed as the current picked up speed. Gathered intensity. The boat rocked, and as he raised his head, looked around, the woman braced herself. “Hold on,” she warned.

He did. He held on to Jessie, still as death in his arms, and jammed his knees against the edges of the canoe. He glanced over the edge, saw the eddies of white capping the suddenly angry current. Took in the solid rock hemming them in on both sides, a jagged, fractured cliff border.

And the woman, their savior, who smiled at him. Actually smiled, with her oar held out of the water and dripping across her narrow shoulders. “It’ll get rocky in a minute.”

Silas stared. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Later.” Tall and thin, she moved easily with the current, swaying in practiced rhythm as the boat picked up velocity. Her thick mass of red hair cascaded in a half-dry tangle over her shoulders, liberally streaked with gray.

She might have been seventy. Maybe fifty. It was a hell of a range, but Silas couldn’t pin her down on either. The structure of her face had been thinned by time, elegant still, with deep lines pinching into crow’s feet as she squinted against the brightening light. Brackets edged her mouth when she smiled at him.

Maybe her smile was supposed to be reassuring. But as he stared at her, at her rain slicker and too-large jeans, he felt anything but reassured.

Who was she? Where were they going?

Where the fuck were they now?

Silas’s arms tightened around Jessie. “Tell me who you are,” he demanded. And because he couldn’t help it, added, “Please.”

The brackets at each side of her mouth deepened in amusement. “Oh, have it your way. My name is Matilda.” The woman pitched her voice to carry over the water. “You’re safe with me. I have warm fire and food, and most of what you’ll need to patch up.”

His tongue felt too thick for words. Clumsy. He swallowed, tried anyway. “I—” What? What did he have?
Nothing
. He gripped the edge of the boat in one hand as it rocked violently. “Silas,” he replied. “This is Jessie. Thank you.”

Matilda grinned, and her face crinkled like worn parchment. “Don’t thank me yet. It’s not a hotel.”

Silas grimaced. “We don’t have any money,” he began, only to grunt in mingled pain and surprise as the boat lurched hard, slamming his knee into the metal edge.

Matilda bent with the flow, shrugged off the oar and lanced it neatly, expertly into the water again. “Don’t you worry about that,” she said as she threw her weight into steering. “I’ll take what I can get, and you’ve got more than you think. There we go.” The canoe shook, groaning as she forced it out of the current’s rapid flow.

He held Jessie close, frowning as the cliff wall loomed closer. Jagged edges, serrated rock slammed by them too fucking close. “The boat—”

“Shush.” Matilda didn’t look away from the wall she watched. She lifted the oar, slid it into the water on the other side, and hauled back on its long handle.

Too goddamned close. Silas prepared to kiss the water again as the right side of the boat scraped against the wall. Rock shrieked against metal. The sound gathered, a crescendo scream, and Silas clenched his teeth, his muscles.

Only to slam back against the rim as the pressure suddenly vanished. A hole in the cliff opened up in front of his eyes, a spot in the wall he’d never have seen if they’d just followed the current.

They slid over a rocky lip, dipped nose-first, and flopped into the calmest, greenest water Silas had ever seen.

Ripples splashed out around them as Matilda used the oar to push away from the rock face. “There,” she said again, smugly this time.

He got the impression of color, of brighter light and a strange kind of warmth in the air.

Jessie stirred. His gut clenched. “She’s waking up.”

“No, she’s not.” Matilda quickened her pace, rowing them across the water with surprising, tensile speed. “She’ll stir and moan for a while yet. Almost there.”

Silas bracketed Jessie’s face in both hands, searched it for signs of awareness. Of consciousness. Her wide mouth was slack, lips slightly parted. To his annoyance, his anger and fear, he noticed that his fingers shook as he traced her cheek.

“Come along.” The boat bumped to a jarring halt. Matilda clambered onto a small dock, coiled a rope around a post, and beckoned. “Hurry up, now. Too late for second thoughts.”

She was right. He knew it. Everything had already slammed out of control. Way,
way
out of control.

Cradling Jessie’s too-slight weight in his arms, he followed. The strange bay existed in a crescent of green water surrounded by cliff walls. He stepped off the dock, his boots crunching against a strange mix of black sand and tiny pebbles of smooth rock.

Silas stared at the house nestled in the far point of the half moon, its mix-and-match window frames a lopsided beacon set a hundred feet from the smooth, glassy green water. A sea of purple flowers curled in over the roof, and he could smell the pungent, spicy aroma of tropical blossoms, though he couldn’t find them in the lush fronds that grew like privacy screens to the right of the house.

The air was humid, shockingly warm, and beyond anything he’d expected. Where was this place? Why hadn’t anybody reported it? The stretch of clouded gray sky far overhead told him that the canyon was wide enough to be seen by air, but he would have remembered reports of this.

“Dawdling isn’t going to help her,” Matilda said as she beckoned imperiously from the porch.

Frowning, he lengthened his stride to catch up, cradling Jessie’s still body to his chest. She had stopped shivering, but she didn’t open her eyes. “Can you help her?” he demanded, ducking through the door Matilda held open. “Can you wake her up?”