Last Safe Place, The (2 page)

“Ty? What do you want with—?”

He slapped her. Hard, but casually, like flicking a piece of lint off his shoulder. Her head snapped to the side; she grunted and staggered but didn’t fall. With her cheek aflame, she felt a trickle of blood begin to slide down her upper lip.

“Get the boy. I need him.”

She looked up into his face to plead for him not to drag her little boy into this nightmare. But the words died on her lips. Though the light was poor, she could see his eyes were the eyes of a shark cruising dark waters in a night sea. Empty, but not lifeless, they were aglow with a sentient brutality barely held in check. She knew him better than he knew himself because she had shaped and formed him, and the message in his ice-blue eyes was unmistakable: There was absolutely
nothing
this man wouldn’t do, no evil of which he was incapable.

“Ty’s not home,” she stammered and watched his face darken, his eyebrows draw together like the clouds gathered in the storm outside the window. “That’s his room, see for yourself. He’s spending the night with … a friend. Joey Thompson, from his school.”

Yesheb grabbed her by her upper arm, yanked her across the hallway and through the open door into Ty’s room where a fire truck wallpaper border was the last remnant of the “little-kid” decor she was scrambling to obliterate because it had become “just-shoot-me” embarrassing to him. The fire truck bed was already gone, replaced by a double bed with a Pittsburgh Steelers bedspread. Giant posters of Troy Polamalu and Ben Roethlisberger now hung where paintings of fire hydrants, ladder trucks and firemen had marched along the wall above his bed. The room was in its usual state of chaos. Wrinkled clothes were casually strewn everywhere; it smelled of dirty gym socks. But the bed was made; it was clear it hadn’t been slept in tonight.

Yesheb was still suspicious. “This is a school night. You wouldn’t let him stay overnight at a friend’s on a school night.”

He was right. She wouldn’t. Ty wasn’t at a friend’s house; he was sound asleep on the far side of the back yard. At least he better be asleep. She’d agreed to allow Ty to stay in the guest house with his grandfather—
if
he was in bed by nine o’clock.

“Ty and Joey are working on a science project together. It’s due tomorrow and they needed to work late to finish it.” She could feel Yesheb’s mounting rage in the fingers that dug into her upper arm. He pointed to the pile of books and the open backpack on the desk.

“Why didn’t he take his books with him?”

“He doesn’t need the books for the project,” she said, fabricating a story as the words fell out of her mouth. “The boys are … building a geodesic dome out of sugar cubes. Mrs. Thompson’s bringing Ty home later tonight.” He squeezed her arm tighter, glared at her. “When he and Joey are finished, she’ll drop him off.” Yesheb’s pinching grip on her arm had cut off all circulation to her hand.

“What time will he be back?”

“I said he had to be home by eleven o’clock.”

Yesheb said nothing. Either he’d believe her or he wouldn’t. She had no idea what she would do either way.

“Eleven o’clock. That will leave us enough time.”

He let go of her arm and as she rubbed it to get the circulation back, sheet lightning danced across the night sky and he studied her in the splashes of light that spilled in through Ty’s curtainless window. She felt horribly exposed in the white cotton nightgown. Her long hair—natural blond but colored jet black—hung around her shoulders in a tangle of curls. The curls were natural, too; she had to use all manner of appliances and goo to achieve a straight-as-a-broom-handle, parted-in-the-middle look.

He moved a step closer.

Here it comes.

Some calm voice inside her informed Gabriella that she was about to be raped. Apparently, she was already disassociating because the voice wasn’t even her own. But she recognized it. It was the laboriously cheery voice at the airport that warned: “Do not leave baggage unattended at any time while in the terminal as it may be removed in accordance with TSA regulations.”

When he reached out his hand, she shrank back from him. That actually seemed to please him.

“My seed in your womb will produce … perfection.” He was breathing hard now. She could smell garlic and mint mouthwash. His voice was thick. “Our union will be a mating like none other the world has ever known.” She could feel heat pulse off his body. Every other time she’d been near him he’d felt as cold as death. “I will take you as no man—”

He stopped abruptly, as if he had literally grabbed hold of his own arm. Then she watched him drag himself back from the edge. “But not yet.” His voice was breathy. “Not until we have performed all the rituals.”

Then he touched her cheek, tenderly caressed the thick expanse of twisted scar tissue that covered the right side of her face that puckered the skin from below the corner of her eye to the bottom of her jaw.

“Beautiful, my dear,” he crooned, as if he was talking about the scar and not her face. And maybe he was. He leaned toward her, as if to kiss the scar. She felt his cheek next to hers, his breath on her neck. She cringed away. He began to nibble on her ear—

A lightning bolt of pain stabbed into the side of Gabriella’s head and she shrieked. She lurched back and saw blood on Yesheb’s mouth and he was chewing …

She reached up, confused, and grabbed her ear, on fire with agony. It was wet—she was bleeding—and there was a ragged …

He had bitten off her ear lobe!
That’s what he’d been chew …

The room began to whirl around and around. The pain dimmed. The light grayed out. The world went black.

When Gabriella came to, she was lying on her bed. The pain in her ear fired her instantly alert. Blood had soaked the top right side of her nightgown and was smeared on the sheets around her. But when she reached up she found a bandage on her ear—crude, made with gauze and some surgical tape Yesheb must have found in the cabinet in the bathroom. She sat up and saw that her gown was hiked up above her knees, twisted around her. She grabbed it, yanked it down, scooted back against the headboard and pulled the covers up around her the best she could.

Yesheb stood rigid in the doorway staring at her. The fire of hunger in his eyes was so fierce she could feel the heat all the way across the room.

“Your skin is soft,” he purred. “Smooth beneath my hand.” He stopped, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “But … I did not, I
would not
dishonor you, my precious Zara.”

She stared at him, unblinking, didn’t move. Maybe she was going into shock. No, she was already in shock. Reality was wrapped in cotton; everything felt muted, muffled.

“We will be joined together,” he rasped through clenched teeth, “only when it is time.”

Apparently unaccustomed to reigning in his passions, he turned abruptly, stepped out into the hallway and began to close her door behind him. “I will wait for that time here.”

It was obvious he could barely hold his need in check. Maybe he couldn’t manage it in the same room with her.

Gabriella burst into tears and didn’t know why. Perhaps the menace of his passion was unbearable. But that didn’t make her feel like
crying.
Running, yes, but not crying. Sobs wracked her whole body anyway, without the advice and consent of her mind. If this intensity kept up, she’d soon be hysterical. But maybe this was hysteria.

Yesheb seemed to approve of the tears.

Her sobbing ramped up a notch, and still she felt like a spectator to it.

Then he said something that would have been tender from a normal man. “I will be right outside your door, my precious Zara. When you have cried yourself to sleep, I will come in and sit with you in the darkness and watch over you.” His next words were spoken in a voice deep and booming,
the sound bouncing off the insides of an oil drum. “When the boy comes, we will perform the sacrifice and then
we shall be one!”

She stopped crying in mid-sob, sucked in a ragged gasp as understanding dawned.

The
sacrifice?
Ty!

Yesheb closed the door behind him as Gabriella fell over in the bed sobbing. But this time her horrified mind had joined her body in hysteria.

H
E STANDS IN
the hallway outside her room and listens to her cry. It is a haunting sound, lost and lonely and lovely, one he yearns to hear often. It rises and falls in something like a melody, a song of fear and horror that goes on and on.

Yesheb hears it while his mind processes dozens of other sensations at the same time. He read once that autistic children are unable to differentiate among all the stimuli assaulting their senses, unable to tune anything out, so for them, life is a cacophonous cauldron of unintelligible sounds and smells, sights and feelings.

Yesheb’s mind is more like an autistic mind than a normal one. But rather than being unable to differentiate among the stimuli around him, he is able to attend to all of it at once. He stands in the maelstrom of it now, tastes the salty flavor of blood and tissue, hears the sobbing as part of a symphony of his own breathing whishing in and out and his heart’s rhythmic thump-whoosh, thump-whoosh. He smells fear sweat—hers—and arousal sweat—his—and feels the compression of his feet into shoes, his body into clothing and sees …

All the color is gone.

He balls his hands into fists so tight his fingernails dig into his palms. No blue sky, green grass, red lips. No color in anything. Black, white and shades of gray.

He can’t think about that now! Will
not
think about it! He maintains absolute control over his mind and body and can remove thoughts from—

Why is the color gone? Where did it go? Is it a punishment?

What have I done to anger The Voice?

The thump-whoosh, thump-whoosh of his heart kicks into a gallop. Horrid little doubts roar around in his head. Ugly bikers on custom Harleys, they race faster and faster as something like panic rises up with a taste of vomit in his throat.

And for a long time he stands as if in a trance while huge battles are waged in his soul. Emotions attack in swarms but he fights them off, grapples to regain control. All the upheaval is painted on the background of sobbing. His bride, crying behind the closed door. The princess he has found against all odds, among all the women in the world.

After a while, the image of her begins to steady him. Once she is his, the planets will align properly. Yes. And he will see color again then. Yes!

But if something goes wrong and he cannot have her, will his other senses go away too, stop functioning? Leave him deaf or totally blind, unable to smell or feel?

An ice pick of dread stabs into his belly so powerfully he actually grunts from the pain of it.

“No!”
he whispers aloud. “My bride and I will be one!”

When his essence is again totally present in the hallway—bloody and battered from contests unseen on the human plane, but triumphant—he listens to the music of Gabriella’s tears. How he loves that sound. He could listen to it for—

She has been crying a long time. It’s amazing she hasn’t exhausted herself by now, sobbing that hard. Yet she continues to cry with the same abandon as when he left her.

A cold fist grabs his guts and squeezes. It is
not
fear! Yesheb has mastered fear!

Even so, he turns with the speed of a striking black mamba, flings the door open and switches on the light. The bed is empty. The window is open; rain has soaked the curtains and drips off the sill into a puddle on the shiny wood floor. On the nightstand, Gabriella’s iPhone rests in a slot on a black speaker box. The microphone icon of the Voice Memo app shines on the screen and the sound of her sobbing issues through the speakers.

Gabriella is gone.

Yesheb lets out a cry, a wailing howl of rage and frustration, then turns and bolts down the stairs after her.

“T
Y
,
WAKE UP
!”

Gabriella shook her son roughly. He was usually hard to awaken but his hazel eyes popped open instantly and he looked up confused.

“Mom, wha—?”

“Get up, we’re leaving.”

She threw back the covers and yanked the boy to a sitting position. She’d carry him if she could, but he was too big for that now. The golden retriever at the foot of Ty’s bed had gotten to his feet as soon as she lurched into the room, panting and dripping, and stood beside her now, wagging his tail.

“Where are we go—?”

“Just come on!”

The boy picked up his glasses from the bedside table and fumbled them onto his face, then looked at the floor in a daze, searching for his slippers. She grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. “No time for shoes. Let’s
go!”

She heard movement behind her and the overhead light flicked on, momentarily blinding her. She turned in slow motion to face the man standing in the doorway, then grunted in relief, took two steps and slapped the light switch back off.

“What in the world—?” Theo began.

In the brief splash of light Gabriella had seen the shock on the old black man’s face. She must look a fright. Her hair plastered to her skull, her nightgown soaked and ripped—she’d caught it on something as she climbed off the sun porch roof—with blood dripping from her ear. The bandage had slipped off during her nightmare flight across the yard, her white gown glowing like the tail of a comet in the flashes of lightning, so bright she feared the light would shine in the upstairs windows and Yesheb would see.

“Ty and I have to get out of here.” She moved to drag the still sleepy child around him, but the old man stood firm, blocking the door.

“You not gone run outta here in the middle of the night ’less you tell me what—”

“There’s a man in the house,” she said. “A … stalker.”

“A what?”

“A
stalker!”

“How’d he get past that guard, that rent-a-cop Ridley?”

Gabriella had hired Thomas Ridley after the police refused to listen to any more of her complaints that she was being watched. She didn’t have time now to tell Theo about the bloody dagger.