Night Beyond The Night (19 page)

“I was married to a man named Daniel when I was sixteen. I thought I was in love with him—maybe I was, but it didn’t last long. We didn’t live in Envy, we lived in another settlement, fairly large, of maybe a couple hundred people. My mother remarried and moved there when I was twelve, and so I went with her and was married four years later.

“We were married for six years, but I stopped loving Daniel long before he died,” she said, bitterness creeping into her voice. “When he couldn’t accept that I couldn’t get pregnant. When it became clear that I wasn’t able to help him contribute to society.”

“Contribute to society?” Of course. “By having children. By helping to repopulate the human race.”

Jade nodded, then moved on with her story. “Anyway, Daniel was a bounty hunter.”

“A bounty hunter? What does that mean?”

“Bounty hunters work for the Strangers. They help manage the
gangas
and do whatever dirty work the Strangers ask. Sometimes it includes finding and abducting people, sometimes it’s scavenging or stealing. They’re humans like us, but allied with the Strangers for whatever reason.” She looked up at him with an odd expression on her face. “As a matter of fact, there’s a bounty hunter by the name of Raul Marck who’s after me. He’d bring me back for a big, fat reward if he ever found me.”

Elliott stared at her, surprised by the blitheness of such a statement. “And yet you run around, traveling from place to place, where he might easily find you?”

Jade shrugged. “I could hole myself up and hide away the rest of my life, or I can be very careful and work against the bounty hunters and the Strangers, using what I learned during those three years to help the Resistance. Which one makes more sense?” She brushed a lock of hair from her face and continued, obviously not waiting for his opinion.

“So Daniel was a bounty hunter,” she continued. “I didn’t really understand much about what he did during that time. He traveled around a lot, and I just thought he was a trader—someone who finds goods, scavenges them, and brings them back for sale or barter. Or buys things from farmers or ranchers in the smaller settlements. But the Strangers realized Daniel was cheating them, playing them against each other, and he was executed by one named Preston. They gathered us up—me, his mistresses, and children—and were going to turn us over to the
gangas
.”

“Turn you over to the
gangas?
What for?”

“That’s how they feed. They eat human flesh—or, rather, they prefer it. I think they’ll also eat animals. But only non-blondes. The blondes are taken away to the Strangers. I’m not sure if they’re the lucky ones or not.”

Jade drew in a long breath, fidgeting with the bracelets on her wrist, then continued. “So it was either be fed to the
gangas
or find some way to save us. I’d noticed in the past that Preston seemed . . . interested. In me. So I took advantage of that, figuring that nothing would be worse than being torn apart by flesh-eating monsters. I soon realized there was a chance I could be wrong.” She was looking at him over the tops of her knees, almost matter-of-factly. As if she didn’t dare think too much about it.

Now he moved, unable to remain still. He touched her, his fingers closing gently over the top of her cool hand. “Jade.”

He drew in a breath to continue, but she talked over him, as if needing to get it off her chest. “I managed to get away after two aborted attempts, and now—you have to understand, Elliott . . . now I’ll do anything to destroy the Strangers.” She looked at him, looked him fully in the face. “Whatever I have to do.”

Elliott swallowed, his throat so dry it constricted audibly. “You were with the Strangers for three years?” He could only imagine what happened to her there . . . at the hands of a man who would have just as soon turned her—and children—over to flesh-eating zombies.
Good God
.

Jade lifted her left wrist, showing him the trio of bands there. “Three years. One bracelet for each year, one bead for each month. I stole the beads and gems from Preston—it was a small act of defiance, to sneak them from him or his clothing and use them to mark the days until I could get away.” She smoothed slender fingers over the thin braided thongs. “One is woven from a skein of rope he tied me with. This one is made of leather, from a whip. The third is from one of the laced-up gowns he liked to see me wear.”

She smiled, sort of crookedly, and looked back up at him. Elliott, who’d been feeling horribly nauseated at the thought of ropes and whips, was shocked by the bolt of emotion that rushed through him when their eyes met. Something real, and strong. Tangible.

“I wasn’t a very accommodating concubine,” she said. “I think that’s part of what kept me alive, and kept him interested. He didn’t get bored.” She lifted her chin and swept a long swath of hair from her face. “Preston loved my hair—it was longer than this at the time. Nearly to my waist. I shaved it off. That was one of the few ways I was able to retain any control over my own body. I bribed some of the other servants to bring me razors so I could keep it shaved the whole time I was there, and there was nothing he could do about it.”

“Nothing?” Elliott felt the word catch in his throat. He had an ugly feeling that “nothing” was a lie. A man who destroyed children and employed whips likely wouldn’t let an act of defiance like that go unpunished.

“Nothing that mattered. He could beat me, or rape me, or whatever, but it wouldn’t make my hair grow back. I was still in control.”

Or whatever?

Elliott resisted the urge to shake his head. Was she really this strong? This unemotional? He saw nothing in her eyes that seemed weak or beaten. Nothing less than determination. Her whole life had been taken from her for three years—more, really, if she was in a loveless marriage to a man who thought of her only as a brood mare and took on mistresses to impregnate. No wonder she was a control freak. “You made it through three years of what must have been hell.”

“It
was
hell, no question about that,” she said, a little bit of that delicious smile tipping the corner of her mouth. “But it was preferable to death. Any life is preferable to death, in my mind. Because it can always improve. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. End of story. You know?”

He nodded in spite of himself, in spite of the nagging realization that there had been moments since he walked out of that cave that he’d wished for death. That he’d wished not to have to go on, now that things had changed. There’d been times when he knew he could never find comfort or a place for himself, because everything he’d ever known was gone.

“The storm’s stopped,” Jade said suddenly, and Elliott cocked his head to listen. Sure enough, the roar beyond had ceased.

A little grateful for the chance to assimilate all that she’d told him, to get his own emotions under control, Elliott said, “Let’s check things out.”

Carefully, he opened the door to the room in which they’d battled the Stranger, having a much easier time of it now that the wind had died down. The room was filled with shadows—debris blown in from the storm as well as the original furnishings. He saw no sign of any glow or illumination, and opened the door wide enough to let the limited light from their fire spill into the room.

Although it had been late afternoon when the storm descended, it was obviously well past dusk now. Elliott found a rusted out waste can and scooped the burning rag into it, toting the fire into the larger room.

“I just realized I’m hungry,” Jade said. “I’ve got some things in my pack.”

“I could eat too.” Elliott glanced out at the darkness, feeling a gentle breeze, still damp from the storm. “I guess we’re not going to make it back to Envy tonight. Unless you want to take the chance and travel in the dark.”

Her expression sobered as she looked out the window. “No, it’s too dangerous.” She bit her lip, obviously torn, staring into the night.

Jade dug in her bag and pulled out bottles of water and some seasoned chicken wrapped in thin bread. Elliott produced an apple and some carrots and they sat in front of the little fire, to which he added a few handfuls of debris for fuel. And they ate, quiet for a time. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he tasted the food.

“So now that I’ve told you my deep, dark secrets,” Jade said, breaking the comfortable silence, “are you going to tell me yours?”

Surprised out of his own meditations, concentrating on
not
thinking too much about spending the night here with Jade in this disarrayed room, Elliott looked up. “What makes you think I have any deep dark secrets?”

“A guy who was frozen in time for half a century has to have some secrets.” Her lips tipped up in a little smile. She had a crumb next to the corner of her curly mouth. “Besides the fact that you wouldn’t shake Lou’s hand and you yelled at me not to touch you.”

“Oh. That deep, dark secret.” He couldn’t help returning the smile. She was becoming impossible to resist.

But he needed to keep his head, at least until he figured out what kind of woman Jade really was.

Maybe a woman who’d been forced to be a whore for three years would now jealously guard her sexual freedom—or even exercise it freely, because for so long she couldn’t. Maybe being involved with a variety of men was Jade’s rebellion against those years—having authority over her own body again, and being unwilling to jeopardize that.

She could feel she was giving up control by committing or tying herself down to one man. He already knew she needed control.

The problem was, Elliott was and always had been a one-woman man. He’d just been searching for that one woman for too long.

And, looking at Jade over the quiet fire, her intelligent eyes focused on him, her sexy mouth in that half-smile . . . knowing what she’d been through, witnessing her bravery on the horse and knowing that her quick thinking had helped him dispatch the Stranger tonight . . . he was terribly afraid he’d found
the one
. Here, in this post-apocalyptic hell, far from houses with white picket fences and school buses and the American Dream.

He was afraid he’d found her, and that she wasn’t ready for
him
.

He realized he’d been staring, and had completely lost track of the conversation.

“So my deep dark secret is, I have this . . . problem,” he said, recovering quickly. He leaned back against an old metal desk, putting space between them—as if that would make him stop thinking about lunging toward her. “I am a doctor—as hard as it might be for you to believe.”

“Oh, I believe it now, knowing that you’re from . . . before. And you’re not only a doctor, but you seem to be able to heal people. You healed me. I wouldn’t call
that
a deep,
dark
secret. Can’t you do any better?”

His own short chuckle caught him by surprise. Pragmatic
and
controlling. What a package. “Well, how’s this? I can actually read a person’s body and then, if I focus hard enough, I can heal them, simply by concentrating. But there’s a catch.”

“Isn’t there always?” She seemed so at ease, humor lighting her eyes, the tension dissolved from her face as if once she’d spoken of the disturbing memories, she could pack them away. Just as he did. Leaning forward, she began to untie her hiking boots.

“Yeah, well this one kind of sucks.” The levity slipped from his mood, and he was reminded again of how fatal this deep, dark secret could be. “The catch is, when I heal someone, I seem to take their injury—whatever it is—into my own body. If I don’t get rid of it, it stays with me, and grows worse. Very quickly.”

Her smile had faded, and now her expression turned grave as she paused in the middle of untying her second boot. “How do you get rid of it? Oh . . . by touching someone? Is that it?”

Elliott nodded. “Right. So I pass it on to someone else whether I want to or not. Which can be a little bit of a problem.”

“Yeah. I can see that. Wow. And I thought I had problems.”

He hesitated . . . but she’d been pretty open with him. And he felt the need to tell someone. “I’m afraid I accidentally killed one of the men I was in the caves with. A guy named Lenny. I’m pretty sure I passed septic infection from an old man to Lenny. I saved the old man’s life, and Lenny died.” He glanced out at the window as the night breeze lifted a little more strongly. “I didn’t realize how it worked then. And now I’ve been sort of playing it by ear, and that’s why I’ve got to be careful about touching people. In case. . . .”

“In case you’re carrying something.” Her eyes narrowed speculatively, and Elliott’s heart shifted. She was looking at him so . . . carefully.

“Today, I scanned the ladies in Greenside. One of them has terminal cancer. It’s everywhere, in most of her organs.”

“You could heal her, but . . . then you’d have to give it to someone else. Or keep it yourself.” Clear understanding rang in her voice. Compassion softened her eyes.

“Right. Or I might be able to pass it on to a . . . cow or something. But maybe not. I don’t know for sure how it works. So how do I make a decision like that?”

She shook her head. “You do the best you can. Isn’t that what you did before? Isn’t that what all the doctors do—House, the hot guy from
ER
, Hawkeye Pierce?”

“In theory. Hawkeye Pierce.” He laughed softly. “He was my hero. He always did everything right, and felt so compassionately about it. I grew up watching reruns of
M*A*S*H
.” Elliott shook his head. Hell, she didn’t have a clue what a rerun was.

Once again they lapsed into a comfortable silence, and Elliott watched as she stretched out her long, jean-clad legs in front of her, next to the fire, and crossed her ankles.

Her feet were now bare. They were slender white feet, her toenails pale and colorless in this age without makeup and nail polish. He knew a thing about nail polish, having lost many a bet with his female cousins, which invariably resulted in him either painting their nails, or, once, to his horror, painting his own. Hot pink.

He couldn’t hold back another little laugh at the memory, and then became aware of how, though he grieved, the memories had become fond as well as painful. Elliott couldn’t remember feeling such . . . ease since waking up in this new world.