Possess: Protect Book 3 Read online

  Where is she?

  If I were Rue, where would I run to?

  Her sister in Liechtenstein floats up into my mind again and again. But I discard it. Rue said that she wouldn’t want to go there, although she might if she knew about her sister being there. But I don’t think she has any idea where her sister is, nor does she have an especially strong familial bond with her.

  Where would she go?

  It occurs to me that maybe she knew back there at the vineyard. That she lied to my face, accepted my gift while she was planning her getaway. Maybe this was a part of her plan all along. My mind runs off in yet another direction.

  Betrayal.

  Deceit.

  Forethought.

  Plotting.

  I force myself to rein it in. Focus.

  Racking my brain, I still can’t come up with where Rue might run. Spain? The States?

  Why would she think that she could get anywhere without me finding her?

  She doesn’t have any identification to board a plane, but a car or a train… I imagine me hounding her footsteps, following her, finding her at a train station. But with what money?

  If she has fled, the best bet is to assume that she is on foot. The only thing I can think of is that maybe she didn’t get far, wherever she’s running to. She doesn’t know any of the surrounding areas very well, so it would be better for her to stick to the main roads.

  Right?

  Getting out a map of the area, I spread it across the kitchen island counter. Narrowing my search to the area around Èze makes it easier, given that all the routes to or from the castle are limited to four roads. Looking at the map, I trace my finger along the coastal highway that extends east and west for a hundred miles.

  If I had to make a bet, that is where I would start.

  Grabbing a flashlight, I trudge outside and down the gravel path to the SUV. It’s still dark except for moonlight and my car’s (front beams?). I curse the fact that Rue decided to disappear at night, knowing there will be no lights along the road to guide my search.

  That miserable, spoiled little bitch. When I find her — and I do mean to find her — I’ll make her regret ever laying eyes on me. Driving as fast as I can, my shoulders hunched over as I peer out the windows of my SUV, I grind my teeth.

  I search for her for hours, going along the coast one direction. Then I turn around and drive the other direction, passing the castle’s ghostly silhouette in the moonlight. All the while, negative thoughts run through my head.

  There is way too much area to search. Even if it was daylight, and I was thinking straight, this would be an impossible search.

  What if Rue had help escaping? What if she somehow made it to another highway?

  Or worse, what if she did jump off the cliff? Should I be looking for her broken body to wash up on the shore somewhere?

  I’m speeding down the winding roads, my headlights the only light other than the moon.

  Thinking that I am too late.

  Thinking that she is dead, or she’s disappeared without a trace.

  What if I never see her again?

  I’m beginning to mourn Rue, in my own fucked up way.

  The terrain grows rockier. The road starts to climb. Soon I find myself at the very edge of a forest, the beginnings of the Alps. When a wolf comes bounding out of the woods chasing after a rabbit, I’m so lost in thought that I nearly hit it. At the last minute, I jerk my wheel to the side. Tires squealing, I can’t help but steer the car off the road.

  Slamming on the brakes, I bump my way into high grasses, stopping just short of hitting a tree. The rabbit and the wolf vanish into the woods as if they never existed.

  Gritting my teeth, I force myself to sit still for a second, to calm my racing heart.

  That was so close. I don’t have time for this, that much is certain.

  Rue is out there right now, laughing at me, escaping in the back of some truck maybe. But there isn’t much I can do, other than checking the SUV before I peel out and throw it in reverse gear.

  My mind is already ten moves ahead, already planning where I will go next. Think. Where would Rue go?

  Cimiez, maybe. Perhaps she saw the monastery there and thought to go back there for help.

  I get out of the car to check for damage, using the flashlight to check the front of the car. There isn’t a scratch on the car, but there is something else, something on the ground that I almost don’t notice.

  Blood. There is a good quantity of blood, tracked through these tall grasses. As if something was wounded and stopped to rest here. When I lean down and dip my fingertip in the blood, it is still wet.

  It’s recent, then. I use my flashlight to follow the trail, my mind whirring.

  Whatever tracked through here, it was big enough to be a person. It was big enough to be petite Rue’s size.

  Without knowing why exactly, I begin to follow the blood trail. I start through the tall grasses, toward the sound of the ocean.

  The trail grows wider, perhaps from my quarry running. I burst out into a clearing, my eyes immediately going to where a large figure is standing over a smaller one. The smaller person cries out in pain.

  I know that sound all too well. Her cry reverberates through my soul.

  “Rue!” I snarl, rushing headlong toward the figures.

  When I get closer, I see that a big man is standing over Rue, his foot on her neck.

  Jesus, she’s not wearing a fucking single stitch of clothing.

  Something in me snaps. I don’t stop, don’t ask questions.

  Instead, I tackle the man off her, careful to grab him from behind. She gasps for breath as I grapple with the man, pulling his suspenders off his body and wrapping them around his neck.

  I slip into the mindset I used back in the day in London when I had to carry out hits in close quarters. It’s a bit like turning off my conscious thoughts, only leaving operational thinking on.

  Pull the suspenders as high as possible, until they are high enough to strangle him.

  Cut off his oxygen supply.

  Avoid his swinging attempts to fight with me.

  Hold the suspenders so tightly that they cut into my flesh.

  Don’t let go, not while he is still struggling.

  Don’t even let go when he sags to the ground.

  Let him thrash about.

  Watch him go quiet.

  Release the suspenders, unwrapping them from my hands.

  Go fetch a rock.

  Pound the fuck out of his head, until I’m absolutely certain he’s dead.

  Ignore all the blood and bits of gore that flies from the man’s head onto my body.

  Turn to find Rue only a few feet, cowering and crying. She’s clutching some slip of rough fabric to her body as if me seeing her nudity is really the problem here.

  Grab her, lifting her up and throwing her over my shoulder.

  Carry her back to the car.

  It’s only when I practically rip the door from the passenger side of the car that I set Rue down. Closing my eyes, I take a few long, slow breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

  When I open my eyes again, Rue is pale as a ghost. I shove her in the car, heedless of her whimpering. She’s bleeding all over my fucking Mercedes, but I don’t care about that.

  Whipping my shirt off, I hand it to her and nod at her bleeding ankle. For the first time, I realize she holds her wrist at a funny angle.

  I want to ask, but I don’t. Getting into the driver’s seat, I decide to get her back to the castle first.

  Because I have so many questions going through my head. But I need to be in the right frame of mind to ask them, and I’m not.

  Not yet.

  Backing the car out of the tall grasses and revving the engine, I start toward the house.

  On the drive back, I try to calm myself. It’s hard though. Every time I look over at Rue, crying silently and trembling, I get worked up again.

  I can’t believe I f
ound her.

  She’s lucky, in one way.

  In another way though, she has never been so unlucky in her whole life as she was the moment she bled everywhere and created the trail that led me straight to her.

  If she thinks that her injuries are going to be the most torment she has to go through now that she’s been found, she is wrong. My lips tip up into the ghost of a smile as I imagine all the ways I am going to punish her for her sins.

  We make it back to the castle without incident. The sky is turning gray as I throw Rue over my shoulder once more and carry her inside. She’s barely awake, not protesting except for when I bump her wrist. Rather than taking her back to her own room though, I take her downstairs to the dungeon.

  Her eyes flutter for a moment when I lay her down on the cot, opening briefly. She looks around groggily.

  “You found me,” she says, before closing her eyes again. A tear rolls down her face.

  Fucking right I found her. My fists bunch. Though she looks completely helpless and so fucking small lying on that cot, I get up and leave her there.

  Locking her cell door, I storm up to my room. Pulling out a bottle of whiskey, I take a pull. Whiskey usually calms me down, but not tonight.

  Not when I need it most.

  Tipping the bottle upward, I do my best to drown myself in drink, to push away the loneliness and apprehension that surrounds me.

  4

  Rue

  Before I even open my eyes, the pain is there, my constant companion. The surface I’ve been sleeping on is more comfortable than the wooden floor, but it’s not my bed. Glancing around, I realize that Dryas must have brought me down to the dungeon for some reason.

  Why would he do that? To protect me from something? To hide me from someone?

  My mind is too hazy to think straight right now.

  I look down to find Dryas fumbling with my ankle, spilling rubbing alcohol everywhere except on my skin. I suck in a breath at the pain when he does eventually manage to splash the deep wound with it.

  Jesus, Mother of Mary, it hurts. My eyes well up.

  I’m definitely awake now.

  Everything hurts. Everything is swollen in some strange way, each part bruised differently. My face feels like it has taken a beating; my arm aches; my wrist feels like it is on fire; the wound on my leg makes me wish I were dead.

  I smother a scream by putting my hand to my mouth.

  If Dryas realizes I’m awake, he doesn’t even look up at me. He sets the bottle of rubbing alcohol aside. He pulls out a thin bottle of dark liquor, upending it above his mouth. The pour is too much, the excess sloshing outside his mouth, dribbling down his chin.

  He apparently isn’t bothered by the alcohol dripping from his face, because he just lets it stay there.

  “Dryas,” I husk softly, sitting up on one elbow. Even that is too much activity for me. My throat feels extra bruised, scraped raw from screaming. The man had his foot against my flesh, pressing my airway closed.

  Just thinking about it now makes me inhale a deep gulp of air.

  Dryas looks up at me, scowling. His stare is intense and unblinking. He throws the empty bottle aside, not caring that it cracks when it hits the cobblestone floor. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “What?” I ask, confused. I bump my hurt wrist, making my skin crawl with pain again. I make a sound of pain.

  Dryas is not amused. “Shut the fuck up.”

  My mouth gapes a little. What has made him so angry?

  He produces another flask, this one mostly full. Eyeing the flask that he sips out of, I attempt to delicately figure it out.

  Is he mad at me for leaving the castle?

  That has to be it. I know better than that, I was just so upset after our argument earlier that I was not thinking straight.

  Shifting my weight on the cot, wincing at the pain, I try again. “Dryas—”

  The glare he shoots me ends my words before they leave my mouth. “I’d stay silent if I were you. That’s my last warning, little girl.”

  I clamp my mouth shut, my brow descending over my eyes. As I watch, Dryas lurches up, coming closer. He grasps my injured wrist, which makes me yelp. He doesn’t seem concerned, turning my wrist a little to look at it.

  I burst into full-blown tears, scrambling to pull my wrist away from him. Of course, I only end up hurting myself more in the process.

  “Dryas, you’re really hurting me!” I protest.

  He glares at me. “Good. Perhaps you’ll learn not to run away next time we have a fight.”

  Run away? I’m speechless at his pronouncement. What does he think, that I wanted any of this to happen?

  “Dryas—”

  He wrenches my arm upward, which causes an animalistic sound of pain to escape from my chest. Curling inward, my pain spirals to new highs. I can’t think, can’t breathe.

  I can’t do anything but clamp my eyes shut and choke on a sob.

  “Say one more word to me,” he leers. “I swear, if you don’t shut the fuck up right now, I cannot be held responsible for what I do.”

  I sob, my tears blinding me. It’s obvious that Dryas believes… well, I’m not sure exactly, but he doesn’t know about Rafi.

  The other man, the one who tried to keep me in a shack in the woods… Dryas killed him, so he clearly knows about him. I try to do the math, to calculate what it is that Dryas thinks, but the pain in my wrist is too great.

  I whimper, the sound falling on deaf ears.

  “Hmmph.” Dryas lets my arm fall, which is a new kind of pain. Curling in on myself, I try to protect my injured wrist. But he doesn’t care that I’m hurt, doesn’t care that I have almost died at least twice tonight.

  He disappears for a few minutes, coming back with the stuff to make a basic splint. I want to tell him that my wrist is probably broken. That I need medical attention from an actual doctor. But I keep those thoughts inside, sobbing openly the whole time he splints my wrist.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he says every minute or so, like a mantra. He looks up at me, his yellow-green gaze spearing me in place. The rage I see there is unbelievable.

  “If you don’t shut the fuck up, I swear to the god I don’t believe in that I will choke you to death. Is that what you want?”

  Hiccuping, I repress the noises that claw at my throat and shake my head. He just doubles the intensity of his touch, which makes me burrow my head into the thin pillow and scream silent tears.

  When he’s done, he leaves a sandwich and a bottle of water on a plate near the door. Then he steps out of the room, closing me in again. I hear the clank of the lock engaging, and I can faintly hear Dryas’s footsteps receding.

  I cry for a long time, cradling my injured wrist close and staring up at the early morning light coming through the slit window.

  Why is Dryas so angry at me?

  Why won’t he listen?

  The bottle of whiskey no doubt is a large part of why he’s so stringently hateful. But how did his thinking become so twisted?

  After so many tears, I drop off to sleep again.

  It’s a bright cold day outside as Amabel and I are ushered out of the back of the van by the nuns. There is snow on the ground here even though it is late April. Glancing skyward, I wonder where we are.

  Not London, where we left late last night. It is colder here, the altitude rising little by little as we went east. We were kept in a van, but I noticed the temperature dropping as we drove further and further away from our home city.

  I crunch through the snow as I clutch Ama’s arm anxiously, following the pair of frowning nuns toward a grand church rising only a few hundred feet away. The building is obviously old, made of slate mortar and smoke colored stones.

  Ama takes my hand, glancing up at me with a worried expression. She’s only nine years old, her perfect blonde hair and green eyes shining with excitement and nervousness. At twelve, I consider myself more mature. After all, I’ve been taking care of both of us while we have been ho
meless in London.

  That homelessness ends today, though.

  “Are we going to live here, Rue?” Ama asks, turning her eyes toward the church. Tall and grey and somber, the church looks down on us disapprovingly.

  I bite my lip, unsure of my answer. I don’t want to promise Amabel a home, not if I’m not sure whether or not they will want us.

  Mother Anna, the nun that first spotted Ama and me outside of St. Mary’s Church in London, turns her head toward us. “Nothing is certain yet. You must be on your best behavior, yes?”

  Her accent is thick, German, I think. Ama bows her head.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The nuns hurry across the gravel parking lot. I gaze up apprehensively at the looming church, all dark grey stone piled high with shining bits of stained glass here and there. The shadow of the church falls across us as we rush up the broad steps. One of the nuns opens one of the tall oak doors, holding it ajar with her body.

  Ama drops my hand as we step into the dank hush of the church. For some reason, I feel the disconnection like a pang.

  “We are late,” whispers Mother Anna, hearing the church organ playing loudly. “Come.”

  The nuns lead us into the main part of the church, a big room with soaring ceilings and rows of pews. Contrary to the dreary outside, everything in here is white and light-colored wood, with light pouring down from the windows up above our heads.

  The church is mostly empty, except for a person playing the organ and a light-haired man in the pews. As we press forward down the aisle between the rows of pews, the light-haired man turns his head toward us.

  He’s wearing a dark button-up shirt with a clerical collar. He rises when he sees us approaching, and I see that he wears matching black slacks. There is a hungry look on his face as if the nuns are bringing him something especially delicious to eat.

  It gives me chills, thinking that this is the man whose word will be final. Will we have a home, or will we be turned away?

  His blue eyes are cold as the deepest of oceans.

  He doesn’t say anything when the nuns push us in front of him. He just smiles oddly, his eyes glinting. I can feel his gaze as it scrapes over me, calculating.