Abandon The Night (22 page)

His thoughts flickered to Zoë as he peeled down his briefs and started toward the water. Unease that might be defined as guilt sneaked up in the back of his mind, but he ignored it. She’d sent him away. With Marley.

Her intention had been clear.

And aside of that, she’d already tried to ditch him more than once.

And she was probably right: he and Marley fit together much better. They had so much in common. They understood each other. They’d come from the same world.

They’d both been betrayed by their fathers.

He walked into the water, quickly wading up to his hips. The coolness felt damn good, and he dove under, coming up some distance from Marley.

It struck him that he’d been in the same position only a few hours earlier with another woman, and at that time, he’d expected a totally different outcome. The visions of warm, sleek limbs sliding together, hard and hungry mouths clashing had stoked him this afternoon as he swam after Zoë. He’d enjoyed that moment of the hunt, the thrill of anticipation.

“Right, then,” he said, pulling himself back to his current companion. Treading water so that the current wouldn’t carry him downstream, he asked her, “You need the water for healing?”

“For energy,” she told him. They were far enough away that their submerged frog-kicking legs wouldn’t nudge against the other, but close enough that they could talk in normal voices. “I was away from running water for too long. That’s how the Marcks caught me. Otherwise,” she added grimly, “I’d like to think I could have kept ahead of them longer. I, at least, have the advantage of understanding what hiding places might have been in a building—back stairwells, fire escapes, you know. And also what sort of objects I might find in one. I managed to get into a hardware store and found a saw on the tool aisle that was a very effective weapon.”

“I saw you fighting with Raul Marck. You put that saw to bloody good use. You nearly killed him.”

“Good riddance.”

“Tell me about the crystals.”

She nodded, ducked under, then emerged with her hair replastered over her head. “The crystals are living entities. They can’t survive without the energy from running water. As long as we’re near it, we’re all right. And I could even be away for a couple days, but not much longer. As I learned.”

“You really didn’t want the crystal?” he asked, his eyes trailing over to it.

Marley looked at him for a moment, a range of emotions crossing her face. “I seriously can’t believe you’d even ask. Immortality is one thing, I suppose, and yeah, there are times when I don’t want to die. Like last night, I was pretty sure it was over, until I managed a last slice at Raul Marck and got myself away from him. But to have it forced on me? And for the price paid? God, Quent. I thought you knew me better than that.”

She dove under the water, treating him to a glimpse of her sleek arse, no doubt purposely. When she broke the surface again, she was a bit farther away. “So tell me about Zoë. She’s a piece of work. A post-apocalyptic Martha Stewart. And I mean that mostly in a good way.”

“She’s also a hell of a zombie hunter.”

“The attraction surprises me,” Marley said with a knowing smile. “You generally tend toward more sophisticated types.”

“There aren’t too many movie stars or socialites around anymore,” he said. “Makes it a bit hard to find someone who can tell the difference between beluga and osetra.” He laughed, but even to his ears, it sounded forced.

“You know,” Marley said, treading closer to him. Her foot brushed against his leg and he could see the three little beauty marks on her right cheekbone, along with the tops of her breasts floating in the water. And, now that the sun had lowered behind some trees, he made out a hint of the crystal’s glow. “I always figured that when you stopped running around adding notches to your bedpost, avoiding anything that hinted of real intimacy—and I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up—we’d end up together.”

She cocked her head and looked at him with a faint smile, and for a moment, he tumbled back in time, remembering their easy camaraderie. His eyes fastened on her mouth, the wide, full lips that she hated because she said they looked like horse lips. He told her they reminded him of Julia Roberts. She told him he looked like Robert Redford on a good day.

Then, Marley surprised him and swished away on her back, like a skittish mermaid. Her breasts flashed fully for a moment, then were modestly covered by the darkening water.

Before he could think of what to say—for he, too, had often had similar thoughts, deep in his mind when he was being honest with himself—Marley swore. “Damn. I left the soap over there.”

She swam back to shore and, seemingly uncaring of her nakedness, picked up the little pot of soap. She scooped out a hunk and waded back in to her hips and began to lather up.

Quent swam back and stepped out of the water, his back to her so that she might have some privacy, and pulled on his shorts. Thinking.

He
knew
her. He wouldn’t have to worry about Marley sneaking out on him, taking off into the dark after toe-curling sex. Disappearing for days.

She was funny and smart and hot. She was a poor little rich girl to his poor little rich boy. And both of them had been transplanted into this new world where they had nothing.

“So,” she said, “are you going to tell me what happened to bring you here?”

“I wish I knew,” he told her, and explained about the cave.

When he finished, which was about the time she splashed onto shore behind him, Marley said, “You don’t really know if you’re immortal like me, or if you just time-traveled, or if something else happened.”

“I’ve used the term cryogenically frozen, but I suppose time travel is possible. I have no explanation for it other than the fact that Sedona was known for being the center of such strong energy sources, like ley lines, and if some great upheaval happened that caused them to overload or to somehow connect, a massive energy surge could explain it.”

“You’ve always been so fascinated by those sorts of things—explanations for how the pyramids were built and lined up a certain way with…what was it? Easter Island? Or Machu Picchu? Halfway around the world from them.”

“Easter Island. And some nodules on the bottom of the ocean.” He gave a little chuckle. “So you were listening to me all those times I droned on about those things.”

“And about the lost treasures you wanted to find, and Atlantis.”

The mention of Atlantis stopped him. “You must know they—our fathers, and the others—were all members of the Cult of Atlantis before this happened,” he said.

“Yes…but, God, Quent, how did you ever find out about that? It took me years, and I was living with them.”

Shrugging, he decided not to tell her about the Resistance quite yet. “Putting the pieces together.”

He could hear her getting dressed behind him and steered the subject back to his experience. “As I was saying, one of the guys in the cave with us died after we came out, so it’s pretty clear we’re not immortal. And although I haven’t had to shave but once in the last six months, some of the other guys have noticed their beards and nails growing again too.” He shrugged. “Maybe whatever it was simply stopped us from aging or changing for a while, and it takes some time for our bodies to get back to normal.”

“I’m done,” said Marley, walking around so that he could see her. “And it’s getting dark. My little friend is glowing.” Though she gave a short little laugh, he heard the bitterness in her voice.

She was wearing one of Zoë’s tank tops, which stretched much too tightly over her breasts and fully exposed the crystal. He could see that she’d been unable to snap the cargo pants, though they were fully zipped.

“You can’t imagine how glad I am to find you, Quent. I’ve missed you.” She looked up at him and he saw sadness and hope in her eyes. “It was like finding a friend after fifty years of being alone. Fifty years of looking in the mirror and seeing the exact same person,
every day.
Do you know,” she said, her voice taut, “that I’ve had a broken nail for fifty years that’s never grown back? And I’ve never had to have my eyebrows or legs waxed, or my hair cut—thank God I was having a good hair day when they put that damned crystal in my body. I haven’t changed a bit. For
fifty years.
” Tears gathered in her eyes, ready to spill over.

“I can’t imagine,” he replied. “You must hate them.” A renewed wave of fury reminded him how much he hated his father. And how he had his own work to do, his own vengeance to take.

“I do,” Marley said, her voice breaking with anger and frustration. “And I’ve been alone for so long. Without a friend, or anyone to talk to.” The next thing he knew, she was in his arms, and he was folding her close, feeling her shoulders shake and the damp tears wetting his neck. “Dammit,” she sniffled. “I swore I wasn’t going to cry. But I’m so
angry
, and so glad to have found you, Quent.”

He made soothing noises, rubbing her back with his large hands and feeling the water drip from the ends of her hair down over them. Being a man, he was also fully aware of the swell of breasts pushing against him, and being a man, he had a little bit of shifting down in the nether zone as a result—but that was purely nature.

“They’re going to come after me,” she said, her words muffled by his skin and her tears. “Will you help me find somewhere to hide?”

“Of course. I have to have your help. I’m going to need to know everything you can tell me about them.”

“You’ll never get to him, Quent,” she said, stepping away to look up. “He lives in a compound with other Elite, including my father, and there’s no way to get in or out without being seen. Let alone get close to him.”

“I’ll find a way. And you’re going to help me.”

“Aren’t you listening? There’s
no way
, Quent. I’m telling you. I lived there. You’ll be killed before you get close enough to do any damage. And you can’t kill him anyway.”

“I can if I cut the mother-fucker’s crystal out of his goddamn skin.”

“Quent, please…can’t we find another way for revenge?”

“It’s the only thing I can do, Marley. I’ve got nothing else. I’ve got no money, no influence, no skills. For God’s sake, I was an Indiana Jones-wanna-be, going on adventures that meant nothing, spending money and trying to get myself killed so I’d have great stories to tell Bonia Telluscrede or Lissa Mackley so I could get them into bed. And now that it’s all gone, I’ve got rot but the drive and the purpose of killing my father. If I die in the accomplishment, or even trying, I’ll have done the best I can do. There’s no other place for me.”

Marley was shaking her head. “You’re selling yourself short, Quent. You forget, I’ve known you for…well, too long. More than sixty years, though a woman should never admit to knowing anyone that long. And yeah, you’re all those things. But you changed so much after that trip to Haiti. That was when you began to grow up.”

He snorted. “Yeah, the trip that I signed up for purely to spite my father. The minute I got off the damn plane, I wanted to turn around and get the hell back to my luxury condo in Naples. It was bloody hell.”

“But you didn’t. And you stayed and tore your hands up, working on that hospital. And you met Wyatt and Elliott. And when you came back, you’d changed. You didn’t want to show it, but you did. And don’t think I don’t know about the contributions—the hundreds of thousands you donated afterward. And the other humanitarian thing you went on to Malawi.”

“That was just so I could try to meet Madonna on one of her adoption trips, and shag her,” he quipped.

“Quent.” Her voice was steel and something inside him started to unravel.

“It’s all true. But I don’t have any of those resources anymore, Marley. I’m no bloody good to anyone here except to get close enough to kill Parris Fielding. Oh, he’ll want to see me. He’s egotistical enough that I’ll be able to get to him. And then…well, we’ll see what happens.”

“You might not have the money anymore, Quent, but you’re still the same person. Inside. And…I just don’t want anything to happen to you, now that I’ve found you again,” she said, stepping into him again. She pulled his face down for a kiss.

Marley, Marley…
was all he thought.

He kissed her back, their lips cool from the water, bodies warm, mouths familiar and knowing. Sleek and deep and everything comfortable.

They both pulled away at the same time and he saw that she was smiling crookedly at him. “Well,” Marley said, giving him an affectionate pat on the cheek, “if that wasn’t the most distracted, obligatory kiss I’ve ever had.”

Quent blinked and opened his mouth to deny it, but she was already shaking her head. “When you’re ready to move on from Zoë, which I know you will, I’ll be waiting. But I’m not going to be your consolation prize anymore.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve grown up over the last fifty years,” she added with a little laugh. “And while I would always wait for you, Quent, I’m not going to play the games we used to play.”

“Fair enough,” he said, still wondering what had been wrong with his kiss. Then, since they were on the subject, and he was, after all, a man, he asked, “Right, then. Uh…what are you doing for birth control nowadays?”

Marley burst out laughing and gave him a little shove as she turned away. “Don’t tell me you’ve been abstaining and that’s why the air’s so tight between the two of you.”

“Not exactly,” he said, thinking about the two…or three…times he’d not managed to make the withdrawal soon enough.

Bugger it.
Zoë could be pregnant with his child. Right now. A flush of heat and emptiness flooded him. What would she do if she found out she was pregnant?

“Can’t help you there,” Marley said, and he heard the deadness in her voice again. “I haven’t had a period in fifty years. No need for me to have birth control. In fact, I spent the first five years screwing any guy I could just so I could forget about what happened.” She looked at him, and the humor was gone from her face. “You know, the fucking nuclear war that destroyed the whole earth. Including you.”

“Right,” he said. What else could he say? His mind was already edging back to the cozy sanctuary where Zoë was hanging out with Fang.