Hearts of the Hunted (7 page)

"Open your fucking eyes
and
look
at me!"
he shouted. My eyes snapped open and focused on his red face. His
fists clenched and unclenched at his side. "You fucking bitches are
all the same," he snarled. "You all need to be taught your fucking
place. And deep down, you all really want it, don't you? Tell me
you want it."

"I want it," my lips said,
wooden and dull. My stomach twisted again. If he'd done this to
Hannah, I was glad she couldn't remember. Or maybe she did. Maybe
this was what she dreamed of at night. She hadn't really been clear
about how much she remembered and what, exactly, he had ordered her
to forget.

He grabbed a bulge in his
pants, and I shuddered. "It's time for you to learn who's really in
charge. And you'll do whatever I say. Tell me!"

"I'll do whatever you
say," I told him. It made sense. He was so strong, and I was so
weak.

A phone rang in his
pocket, and he silenced it and set it aside. "I should make you
beg, you ugly bitch. You ruined everything last night! And what are
you? Worthless! Say it!"

"I'm worthless." He was
right, of course. What good was I, when I couldn't even save
myself? But save myself from what? Everything was so
fuzzy...

The phone rang again, and
he swore. "Be quiet," he said to me, and he answered it. "Are you
kidding me? No, man, I told you, I'm sick today. I know my day off
was yesterday, but—" He cut off, glaring at me while he listened.
"Fine, I'll come in anyway, but if I crash the truck because I'm
puking my guts out, don't blame me." He jabbed the off button and
glared hard as if it were my fault that he had been
interrupted.

Then, he knelt beside me
and pinched my nipple until I wanted to scream. But he'd told me to
be quiet, so I grimaced and kept my throat closed. My lack of
reaction seemed to make him even angrier, and he slapped me across
my bruised cheek. My eyes stung and sparks danced in my vision, but
I didn't make a sound.

"I'll be back tomorrow to
give you the hard fuck you deserve, and I'm gonna make you beg for
it for fucking with me."

He shoved the phone into
his pocket, gave my other nipple a wrenching tug, and left,
slamming the door behind him. I heard a lock click, then footsteps,
then silence.

It felt like a long time
before I could make myself move, even just a little, but eventually
I was able to draw myself up into a shivering ball of misery. I
cried for a while, stopping only to scream when the fear and
loathing and disgust overwhelmed me.

I must have sat watching
the door for hours before I got up the courage to explore my cell.
The lantern was not actually kerosene, but an electric lantern that
emulated it. I pulled down some of the boxes to dig through them. A
box of trifold paper towels, still neatly stacked in rows, dusty
now. A box of mints with the word Fireside stamped across them. And
a box of salvation.

They were actually nametag
blanks with a pin back, but I had learned to pick locks for fun as
a teenager, and had put that skill to practical use for years now.
And my would-be rapist had installed a simple door handle backward
so that the lock would be on the outside of the storeroom and the
keyhole inside. Devastating enough for a naked woman alone in an
empty room, but with a tool and a little know-how...

I was out almost before I
even finished having the thought. I started to run, but turned
back, put the box back up on the shelf, and locked the door behind
me.
Let him spend a while screaming at the
empty room to 'show yourself'
, I thought
bitterly.

Then, I vanished and
headed back out the same way we'd come in, banging into prep tables
and cold ovens as I stumbled toward the door and out into the light
of day.

Chapter 7

It was afternoon already. I nearly broke down right there
outside the heavy, rusted kitchen door, but I forced myself to
move, slipping slowly to the end of the alley and along the side of
the buildings. I moved with my habitual calm, but inside I was
nearly hysterical, desperate to scream and flee rather than to move
slowly, steadily toward Hannah's apartment and the feeling of
safety that had cradled me there.

It took me a devastatingly
painful hour to cross those few blocks to safety.

The door was unlocked, and
I finally gave in to the urge to hurry, flinging the door open and
reappearing on the other side before I had even finished slamming
it.

I leaned against the door,
pressing my face into it as I turned the lock, desperate for that
sense of safety to seep into me and penetrate the sick, twisting
knot in my stomach. Behind me I heard, "Where the fuck
were
you?" and I
turned.

Hannah, who had been
stalking toward me, froze when she saw my face. Her eyes cooled
from hot anger to warm concern as she started to move forward
again, carefully pulling me away from the door and into her
arms.

I had thought I was out of
tears, but the long walk back to her had refreshed the wells, and I
sobbed until it felt like I was going to rattle apart from the
force of it. She held me, not saying a word. When I had started to
calm, she led me to the sofa and sat, still cradling me against her
until I was silent.

"He took you," she
said.

"Yes. But I got away
before he could—before he—" I couldn't say it, but she knew, of
course. She squeezed me so hard that I couldn't breathe, but I
didn't complain; I could have stayed that way until I died, and I
would have died content.

She relaxed her deathgrip
and said, "At first I thought you were just angry at me, but then
it kept getting later and I called Jack, and he wouldn't help. He
said, 'you want me to file a missing person's report for a gypsy
girl who wanders in and out of town on a regular basis who you only
met two days ago?' And he said that it didn't matter that he knew
you wouldn't have left me with all of this unresolved because he
couldn't report it, and you hadn't been gone long enough
anyway."

Her voice was thick with
tears as her words tumbled out, and I shuddered as that dark honey
seeped into some of the cracks in my soul and warmed me. "And then
when you came storming in just now I thought, 'Maybe I was right in
the first place', and I was so
mad
that you'd made me worry all day!"

She buried her face
against me. "He set a trap for me," I said. "He paid a hooker or
something to act like she was being controlled, and then he froze
me and paid her off. I think he was surprised that I was
Transformed. But not surprised enough."

"Oh, Camille."

"He took me to this empty
restaurant and put me on an old mattress pad in a pantry." I
described it woodenly, needing to get it out and yet sickened all
over again at remembering. Hannah stiffened and then a shudder
passed through her. When it didn't stop, I realized she hadn't
shuddered; she was shivering, hard. I pulled back enough to look at
her face, which had gone white and bloodless.

"You remember."

"I didn't until you
described it, mostly, but—that was it. That was where he took me."
She squeezed her eyes shut, and her fingers dug into me as if she
were afraid I would vanish if she didn't hold tight. "And
then—after—he took me out into the alleys and told me to forget
where he'd taken me, and then he just shoved me away and
disappeared, and I was so scared and confused... How did you get
away? Did you kill him?"

I shook my head. "He was
working up to it, but then his phone rang. He has some sort of
night job—it must be why he only hunts once a week—and they made
him come in. He locked me in the room, and I picked the lock with
some old nametags I found."

"You're brilliant,
Camille," she said. She petted my hair and kissed the top of my
head. "And I bet you want a shower. Come on."

She was right—I sat in her
shower alone and let the water wash him away until my skin was
waterlogged and I had finally exhausted the bottomless well of
tears.

Chapter 8

We slept together that night, each wrapped in soft pajamas
and curled around one another, without a word about our fight or
the horror of being kidnapped. But the next morning, we had to face
it. "We know where he's taken all of us, now. There might be
evidence. DNA!" Hannah said, so we called the police station, and I
reported my own kidnapping.

They had me come in and
grilled me mercilessly on why I didn't report it the night before,
going over and over the details until two cops came in looking
excited. They'd found the storeroom of the old Fireside restaurant
had indeed been converted into a cell, and suddenly it was all,
"Can I get you a coffee, miss?" and, "You'll be more comfortable in
this room," and Hannah was finally allowed to come to me. The last
time they took my statement, they focused more on the kidnapper and
less on exposing me as a crazy person, and I was finally allowed to
leave.

"I sweet talked one of the
cops," Hannah said as we left. "He said they're taking DNA samples
from the mattress and the room. He seems to have left a mess
behind."

"I'm surprised he didn't
clean up when he found out I was gone. I guess he's not as smart as
he thinks he is," I said, folding my hand into hers. Still, we
couldn't tell the cops that we were vigilante Transformed trying to
hunt down a crazy Transformed rapist, so we couldn't share much of
what we knew of his schedule or his pattern. If the cops didn't
find him before Saturday, there was going to be another
attack.

It was lunchtime, and by
silent consent we soon found ourselves at the same little deli we'd
visited before. "I'm sorry that I pushed you to just get past what
he did," I said, staring down at my sandwich. "I was hurt, and I
felt like you were pushing me away. I didn't realize—" The words
choked off, but Hannah reached across the table to take my
hand.

"You couldn't have known
what it was like. The way he—I just need time."

I squeezed her hand, and
we sat in silence for a moment. When I looked up and met her eyes,
everything seemed like it was going to be okay after all. "So
what's our next move?"

Neither of us was sure
where to go from there. The hairs were on their way to Canada and
should arrive in the next couple of days, and there was no way to
rush it. The cops were tearing the storeroom apart, but if he had
two brain cells to rub together, he wouldn't be going back there,
anyway.

I didn't think he'd set
another trap up for me, but we both agreed that it would be best to
stay together after dark and to avoid downtown if we could. It
didn't leave us with many leads to pursue.

The conversation tapered
off on the way back to her apartment, and we walked in pensive
silence until we were locked inside again.

Something had been chewing
at me ever since he had touched me, and it finally came pouring
out. "Hannah, do you think I'm—do you still want me?"

She wrapped her arms
around me and pulled me close as I started to cry. Since when was I
the crying type? But she didn't take it amiss, just rocked with me
as I got hold of myself.

"Of course I still want
you. You don't think that evil man could do a thing to taint
something so beautiful, do you?" And she took my hand and led me to
the bedroom, stripped me out of my clothes, and lay me down on the
bed, kissing and petting me all the while.

I lay still for her, but
in my head I remembered the way that he had made me lay just like
this, and I shivered. She noticed and covered me, pulling the
blankets all the way up to my chin as she kissed every inch of my
face. I closed my eyes and let myself soften under her warm lips,
feeling each kiss brush away some of the tarnish on my inner
being.

When she had covered my
face in her kisses, she moved down, shifting the covers an inch and
kissing every exposed piece of my skin before shifting them down
again and continuing with her benediction. I cried softly under her
attention, but she seemed to know that the tears were ones of
healing and not of fear, because she continued, moving over my
breasts, kissing the nipples that he had cruelly twisted and
pulled. She made me beautiful again from the inside out.

And when she was done, I
felt safe and loved, better able to deal with the trauma, if not to
forget. "Why won't you let me do that for you?" I asked her,
brushing her beautiful hair out of her face.

"I'm just not ready, yet."
And because I finally understood a very small piece of what she had
gone through, I didn't argue. I just pulled her into my arms and
pressed my lips to hers, trying to give her some small measure of
the peace she'd given me.

And then our kiss started
to shift and warm, and it wasn't the soft glow of healing but the
warmth of passion between us. I took what she was ready to give and
no more, wrapping my legs up with hers and holding her close,
keeping my hands on her upper body. My lips moved over hers,
professing my feelings better than I knew how.