The last cuff fell away, and she threw down the bolt cutter. "Your teeth seem more developed than mine." She ran her tongue along her teeth, assuring herself she wasn't really like him as she began to rip away the rotting sides of the wooden coffin. "Since you can't understand a word I say, I'll admit I'm glad about that. I can't imagine biting into someone. Yuck. It's bad enough that I need extra blood to survive. There, I'll cut your clothes away and get that thing out of you."
His clothes had all but rotted off anyway. She had never seen a body so battered before. "Damn them for this." Shea swallowed hard at the extent of the damage. "How could they do this to you? And how could you have survived?" She brushed perspiration from her brow with her forearm before bending over him once more. "I need to move you onto this table. I know I'm jarring you, but it's the only way."
He did the impossible. As Shea took the weight of his broad shoulders, attempting to slide him over, in a burst of courage and strength he shifted himself onto the table. Blood beaded on his forehead, trickled down the side of his face.
For a moment Shea couldn't go on. Her body was seized with tremors, and she lowered her head to hide her tears. She could hardly bear to see his suffering. "Is this ever going to end or you?" It took a few minutes of fighting for control before he raised her head to meet the impact of his black gaze. "I'm going to knock you out. It's the only way I can do this. If anesthesia doesn't work, I'll hit you over the head or something." She meant it, too. She was not going to torture him as the others had.
He touched her cheek with a gentle fingertip, removing a car. He stared at it for a long moment before he carried it to his mouth. She watched the curiously intimate act, wondering why her heart was melting in a way she had never experienced before.
Shea washed thoroughly, pulled on sterile gloves and a surgical mask. When she would have put a mask over his face, too, he warned her off with a silent show of fangs and a wrist lock he couldn't budge. It was the same when she tried a needle. Hack eyes blazed at her. She shook her head at him. "Please don't make me do this, not like this. I'm not a butcher. I won't do it this way." She tried to sound tough and not tearful. "I
won't
do it." They stared at one another, locked in a strange mental combat. His black eyes burned into her, demanded obedience; his rage, always seething, was beginning to surface. Shea's tongue touched her lower lip; her teeth followed, scraping nervously. Satisfaction crept into the black ice of his eyes, and he lay back, certain he had won.
"Damn you for being so stubborn." She cleansed the area round the stake, set up her clamps, all the time wishing for a good surgical nurse and a large mallet. "Damn them for doing this to you." She gritted her teeth and pulled with all her strength. He moved, just a ripple through his muscles, contracting, flexing, but she knew he was in agony. The stake did not budge. "Damn it! I told you I couldn't do this with you awake, I'm not strong enough."
He seized the stake himself and jerked it free. Blood gushed, prayed her, and she fell silent, working desperately to clamp off every source of bleeding she could. She didn't look at him, every ounce of concentration focused on her work. Shea was a meticulous surgeon. She worked methodically, repairing damage, at a fast, steady pace, blocking out everything around her. Her entire being was centered on the surgery, her mind locking him to her so he would not die.
Jacques knew she was unaware of her fierce hold on him. She was so involved in what she was doing, she seemed not to notice how she merged with him mentally to keep him safe. Could he have been so wrong about her? The pain was excruciating, but with her mind merged so strongly with his, it kept the shattered remains of his sanity together.
Twice she added light for the close work, suturing for hours. So many stitches inside and out, and when his chest was done she still wasn't finished. All his other cuts had to be washed and closed. The smallest laceration took a single stitch, the largest forty-two. It went on and on as the night closed them in. Her fingers were nearly numb, and her eyes ached with strain. Stoically she went on cutting away dead flesh, forcing herself to use soil and her saliva, though it went against everything she had ever been taught in medical school.
Exhausted, hardly knowing what she was doing, she pulled off her mask and gloves and surveyed her work. He needed blood. His eyes were nearly mad with pain. "You need a transfusion," she said tiredly. She indicated the blood transfusion apparatus with her chin. The black eyes stared at her relentlessly. Shea shrugged, too exhausted to fight him. "Fine, no needles. I'll put it in a glass for you, and you can drink it."
His gaze never left her face as she wheeled the table to the bed and, with his help, shifted him into the comfort of clean, soft bedding. She stumbled twice, so exhausted that she was half asleep as she went for the blood. "Please cooperate, wild man. You need it, and I'm just too tired to fight with you anymore." She left the glass on the night table inches from his fingers.
Like an automaton she cleaned up, sterilizing instruments, washing down the gurney and tables, bagging the remains of the coffin, the rotted rags, and the blood-soaked towels for burial at the first opportunity. By the time Shea was finished, dawn was only two hours away.
The shutters were closed tightly to block out the approaching sun. She bolted the door and dragged two guns from the closet. Propping them up near her only comfortable chair, she tossed a blanket and pillow onto the cushion, prepared to defend her patient with her life. She knew she needed sleep, but no one was going to harm this man further.
In the shower she allowed the hot water to pour over her, rinsing blood, sweat, dirt, and grime from her body. Shea fell asleep standing up. Minutes later a strange sensation in her mind, almost like the brush of butterfly wings, jerked her awake. She wrapped her long hair in a towel, pulled on her mint-green robe, and stumbled out to check on her patient. Switching off the generator, she made her way to the bed. The glass was still sitting on the nightstand. Full. Shea sighed. Very gently she touched his hair. "Please do what I ask and drink the blood. I can't go to sleep until you do, and I'm so tired. Just this once, please listen to me."
His fingertips traced the delicate bones of her face as if memorizing her shape, the satin softness of her lips. His palm spanned her throat, fingers curling around her neck. He pulled her toward him slowly, relentlessly.
"No." The single word was more moan than protest. He increased the pressure almost tenderly until he had pulled her small form onto the bed beside him. His thumb found the pulse beating frantically in her neck. Shea knew she should struggle, but she was beyond caring, lying helplessly in his arms. She felt his mouth move over her bare skin, a whisper of movement, an enticement. His tongue stroked gently. She closed her eyes against the waves beating in her head. He was there. In her mind. Feeling her emotions, sharing her thoughts. Heat coiled in her as his mouth moved over her pulse again. His teeth scraped, nipped; his tongue caressed. The sensation was curiously erotic. Searing pain gave way to warmth and drowsiness. Shea relaxed against him, gave herself up to him. He could decide life or death. She was simply too tired to care.
Reluctantly he lifted his head, sweeping his tongue carefully to close the wound. He savored the taste of her—hot, exotic, the promise of passion. There was something terribly wrong with him; he understood that. Part of him was locked away so that he had no past. Fragments of memory seemed like shards of glass piercing his skull, so he tried not to allow them in. She was his world. Somehow he knew she was his only sanity, his only path out of his dark prison of pain and madness.
Why hadn't she come to him right away, when he had first called her? He had been so aware of her presence in the world. He had bent his will and commanded her obedience, but she had waited. Jacques had had every intention of punishing her for forcing him to endure madness and pain. Now, none of it made any sense. She had suffered much for him. Had there been some reason she had resisted his call? Perhaps the betrayer or the assassins had been following her. Whatever the reason, she had suffered greatly at his hands already. It didn't make sense that she had deserted him deliberately, prolonged his agony. He could read compassion in her. He felt her willingness to trade her own life for his. When he touched her mind, he felt only light and goodness. It did not add up to the cruel, treacherous woman he had perceived her to be.
Jacques was weak, vulnerable in his present state, unable to protect either of them. Shea was small and fragile. He had been so alone. Without light or color. He had spent an eternity alone, and he would never go back to that ugly, dark world. He slashed a wound in his chest, cradled her head to him, and commanded her to drink. Binding her to him was as natural as breathing. He could not bear to let her out of his sight. Shea belonged to him, and right at this moment she needed blood every bit as much as he did. The blood exchange had been made. Their mental bond was strong. When his body was healed he would complete the ritual, and she would be irrevocably bound to him for all eternity. It was instinct as old as time itself. He knew what to do and that he must do it.
As small as she was, Shea felt right in his arms, a part of his insides. None of it made sense, but in his narrow world, it didn't matter. Even as she fed, her mouth soft and sensuous against his torn flesh, he lifted the glass and carelessly emptied the contents down his throat. When he had sensed her sleeping as she bathed, he had awakened her, fearful of the separation. Now she would sleep beside him where she belonged, where he might have a chance of protecting her should the assassins find them. He might not be at full strength, but the monster in him was strong and lethal. No one would harm her.
The one bit of his memory that remained, forever etched into his mind, was the scent of the two humans and of the betrayer who had lured him to his living hell. He would recognize the voices of the tormentors and their smell. Demons. God, how they'd made him suffer, how they'd enjoyed his suffering. Laughing, taunting, torturing him until madness reigned. And it still reigned. He knew he was struggling for his sanity.
He would never forget the hunger as they bled him dry. Hunger had burned holes in him, crawled through him, eaten at him from the inside out. To survive he had slept, heart and lungs ceasing so that what little blood his body retained, he kept. He woke only when food was near. Always alone, unable to move, in agony. He had learned hatred. He had learned rage. He had learned there was a place where there was nothing, only stark, ugly emptiness and the burning desire for revenge.
Had these same animals attempted to hunt Shea? The thought of her in their hands sickened him. He fit her close to him so he could feel her reassuring presence. Was she being hunted? Were they close on her trail? If he had unfairly punished her failure to aid him, he would never forgive himself. He had wanted to kill her, had almost done so. Something inside him had been unable to do it. And then she had ceased to straggle, offering her blood, her life for him. He had thought himself hard, impossible to touch, yet something in him had melted at her offering. And the way her fingertips had brushed his hair had sent his heart pounding.
He cursed his weakness, both of body and mind. He needed more blood, hot human blood. It would speed his healing. There was something terribly important eluding him. It slipped in and out of his mind, leaving pain and fragments in its wake. If he could just hold it for a moment he might remember, but it never stayed long enough to do other than drive him mad. It was unbearably frustrating to have his memory taken from him.
Shea groaned softly, the sound cutting through him like a knife. She was shivering, even in her heavy robe. His gaze quickly jumped to her face. She was in pain. He felt it in her mind. Instinctively he laid a hand on her stomach, fingers splayed wide. Something was happening inside her body. Again his head seemed to splinter as he tried to catch the memory. He should know. It was important for her.
Shea rolled over and came to her knees, clutching her stomach. Her eyes were wide with fear. She was extremely cold, as if she would never be warm again. Shivering, she could only rock back and forth as wave after wave of pain shook her small frame. Heat was burning her insides, eating through her internal organs, squeezing her heart, her lungs. She rolled off the bed onto the floor, landing hard, attempting to protect her patient from whatever virus she had contracted. The towel unraveled, and her hair spilled out like dark blood pooling around her head. Her abdomen was on fire. A fine sheen of perspiration coated her body; across her forehead was a faint ribbon of scarlet.
Jacques tried to move, to get to her, but his body was not his own, lying heavy and useless. His arm couldn't reach her. His every movement brought pain rippling through him, but his world for so long had been pain, he knew no other. It had been his only reality in the darkened eternity of the damned. Pain only added to his iron will. He would live for all eternity and find those who had taken his past. He would turn that same iron will to finding a way to help Shea.
Shea's slender body writhed, locked, writhed again. She rolled to her knees, tried to crawl toward her medical bag. She wasn't thinking; the movement was blind, instinctive. She had no idea where she was or what was happening to her, only that the fire consuming her had to stop.
He struggled, raged at his inability to move, to help her. Finally he lay back, crawling into her mind as he had many times before in an effort to save himself.
Come to me, to my side.
The whisper of sound, the thread of sanity, was in her head. Shea knew he had not spoken aloud. She was hallucinating. She groaned, rolled over, and curled up in the fetal position, making herself as small as possible. She would not go near him. If this were contagious, he would not survive such a virulent flu.
What if she didn't survive? What if she had brought him here, and, with no one to care for him, she left him to die slowly of starvation? Somehow she had to tell him there was blood in the icebox. It was too late. Another wave of fire beat at her, attacking her internally, spreading to every organ. She could only draw up her knees like a mortally wounded animal and wait for it to pass.