Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A tale of Atomic Love (4 page)

She leaned back against the seat.

“Miss me? No. Look for me? That’s something else altogether.” She turned to face him. “He’ll come looking. He probably already is. And when he does, you’d better be ready.”

“I’m not afraid of him.”

“You should be. I am.”

Lu sighed. Hopped out of the cab, went around, and wrenched Montessa’s door open. Her hands, still padlocked to the door handle, were yanked away, and she nearly fell out.

Lu grabbed her wrists, looked into her eyes.

“Are you going to scream?” he asked her.

She swallowed hard.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Not right now, no.”

“Then I won’t scream.”

His skin was perfectly smooth, not a muscle moving. There was horror in such tranquility, in such lack of despair. She knew he was raging inside, pacing inside of his brain with deft movements, but outside was that terrible placidity.

“I won’t. I promise.”

He nodded once, curtly, and unlocked her wrists from the door. They were still bound together, and he grabbed the rope with one hand.

“Come on, then.”

He dragged her down a craggy path. She stepped on rocks and pebbles and pieces of sharp shell with her bare feet, but clamped her lips together. She wouldn’t cry out. She’d take that pain deep inside of herself. Wrap her soul around it. Tether herself to this earth as long as she could.

Lu didn’t slow down but pulled her along behind him. Anyone watching from far away would only see a young man with shiny black hair leading his girlfriend down to the water. Something swe
et. Something playful. Montessa closed her eyes briefly. So few people see what’s right in front of them. The beauty and magic and misery and sorrow. It’s all lost.

“Keep up,” Lu growled and yanked her closer to him.

She banged her knee against a large rock and yelped. She bit her lip again and limped down to the beach.

The waves were white and frothy a
nd furious. Not the cool, soothing waves that were shown on tropical beaches.

“They’re angry,” she said, and tried not to notice when Lu watched her from the corner of his eye.

“That’s a stupid thing to say.”

Her ears burned.

“Stupid to you or not, it doesn’t make it any less true.”

They watched the waves, heard the crashing, noticed the sun coloring the clouds orange.

“I want to go in,” Lu said. He pulled on her bound hands again. “Let’s go.”

“I don’t know how to swim,” she said, and for the first time, her voice shook.

Lu nearly smiled.

“You won’t need to.”

The water was shockingly cold around her ankles and knees. The salt stung the wounds on her bare feet, the scratches on her arms and legs, but at the same time…

“Why are you crying, girl?”

“My name is Montessa,” she said, and that’s all she could say. The water moved in and out, over her skin and around her legs and into her soul. Tears fell down her face, mixing into the ocean, and Lu thought about how he had heard salt water healed everything. Sweat and tears and the sea. Maybe it was true.

He drew her farther out. The waves bumped around their knees and thighs. They both gasped at the cold around their waists and chests. The water drew back, roared around their shoulders, and drew back again. Lu put his arm around Montessa’s waist to keep her from falling.

“I always wanted to see the ocean,” she said, and she was crying again, her wet hair falling into her eyes and spilling over his hands.

“I’m sorry it’s with me,” Lu told her, and realized it was the first time he had ever apologized to a victim, and his blood burned, boiled, and the water churned around them.

“Too hot,” Montessa gasped out, spitting water from her mouth, and Lu took a deep breath, tried to control his rage, tried to cool the water before it gave them blisters, tortured even more by the heavy salt.

“Let’s go,” he said roughly, and she followed, wiping her eyes awkwardly on her wet shoulder, her clothes dripping and salt baptizing her body.

“Thank you,” she said quietly when they reached the cab. Her clothes were wet, but not dripping. She climbed in obediently, moved to the back and sat in her chair without fighting.

“May I please keep my hands in front of me this time? It really hurts to have them behind me.”

Lu paused.

“I won’t do anything,” Montessa said. She smiled, and it was full of sadness so bright that Lu nearly bared his teeth at it. “You probably figured it out by now. I’m not the type of person who does…anything.”

She looked away, blinking
, and Lu had seen enough salt for the time being.

He let her bound hands rest in her lap. Tied her firmly to her chair.

“Go to sleep,” he said, and slid into the driver’s seat.

He noticed the black hood lying between the door and the seat. He stuffed it into the
glove compartment, shifted into gear, and started to drive.

“This guy?” Lu said.

“Renan.”

“Yeah. Him. Why are you
together, anyway? He’s obviously a complete tool.”

Montessa was silent. This was where she was supposed to defend Renan. Tell her kidnapper she was in love, that he didn’t know her boyfriend, that he couldn’t make jud
gments on the wonderful man she had committed her life to.

“Hey. Girl.”

“I told you it’s Montessa. Why don’t you tell me your name?”

“I don’t want to.”

“It’s Lu.”

“How did you know that?”

She looked out of the window. He’d let her into the front of the cab, shackled her to the door handle again. It was dark. The seat was soft and comfortable and felt like luxury. She had told Lu that. He said that he was frightened that such small things made her happy. She must be awfully used to being miserable, he said, if such tiny things meant so much.

“There’s a lot of energy to you, Lu. Built up under your skin. Behind your eyes. One day you’re just going to explode.”

She turned to him, studied his profile in the light of the oncoming traffic. He looked straight ahead, but his eyes smoldered in a way that made her stomach lurch. His lips moved, slightly. A tic. Everything sewn tightly together, kept under control. A tiny muscle spasm in his lips. That was all.

“You think so?” he asked. And was surprised to find that he cared, maybe just a bit. Wanted to find out what this woman thought of him, what she could see. Or See. Whatever it was.

“I think so. That’s why you kill, isn’t it? To release the anger? The steam?”

He continued to not look at her. She continued to breathe in air without a hood, to sit on a chair that wasn’t metal, to be unbound except for her wrists and ankles.

As she had said, luxury.

“My first kill…
” He swigged a soda. Stopped speaking. Checked the side mirrors instead.

“Your first kill?” she prompted.

He faced her then, and the look on his face was the expression of two faces in constant battle with each other. One of snarling hate, a primitive fierceness that made Montessa want to close her eyes, to turn her throat away from his canines. The other, that was the real Lu. A sad, miserable, trapped boy inside a man’s body. Somebody who cried while he sliced seams in suits of flesh. Somebody who nervously ran bloodied hands through his dark hair, spiking it even more than usual.

“Lu.
And Lu. Lulu,” she said, and was surprised when he laughed. It was a bitter sound, the sound of comfrey petals and bryony roots, things mixed together that shouldn’t be, and Montessa’s stomach lurched again.

“You know all about me, don’t you, Crazy Girl? I bet they called you a witch growing up. I bet they still do. Your boyfriend
especially. Before he beats you. During. While making love.”

Her lips had been curving upward slightly, but the smile curled down into a frown. She looked out of the window again.

Lu felt like cursing. Like grabbing her hair, leaning back and yanking. Pulling it out by the roots, seeing if it really was that dark, that soft. Making her scream until her head blew, throwing splashes of blood against the windows of the cab.

Did her boyfriend do that to her, he wondered?

It made him sick. It made him no better. And Lu desperately wanted to be better than that piece of trash.

“We don’t make love,” she said. Her voice was low. There was a hollowness, a sadness to it he didn’t expect. It made Lu cold inside, and he wasn’t a man used to being cold. He ran hot. Ran
just
this side of explosive. His blood boiled all the time, and sometimes it came out through his fists, his hands, the sensual lick of his knife.

He didn’t like this, the change. He wanted to wrap something warm around himself.
Her arms, her hair,
he thought briefly.

This startled him. He gasped.

“Making love is something different,” Montessa continued. “There’s no love there. Not for either of us. I don’t think there ever was.”

“Then why do you stay? You’ve been with him for a long time.”

“You’ve been watching me for a long time.”

He shrugged.

“Among others. I watch most
of you. I want to know who I’m taking, sometimes.”

She wanted to ask him about it, but that would come later. If there was a later. She found she didn’t care. She found that the past and
the now and the later all rolled together into one big ball of…something. Regret? Apathy. She liked apathy better than regret, anyway.

“He was somewhere to be, I suppose
. A warm body. And he said he loved me, at first.”

“Did he?”

“I don’t think so, but it didn’t matter. The words are nice, even if there isn’t any truth behind them.”

Lu’s face changed again. Became dark. His breath sounded like the howl of dead things.

Montessa smiled at him, a real smile, and Lu was struck in the heart by the force of it. The beauty. A blade of sincerity. He couldn’t breathe.

“You’re upset for me, Lulu. Aren’t you
?”

It wasn’t a question. It was her knowledge, the Things She Knew, and Lu didn’t have anything to say.

“That’s…sweet. That means something. Thank you.”

She was still smiling, but a tear ran down her face, and then another. Silently. Traitorous. Neither of them had even known they were there. The tears and the smile and her dirty, matted hair…juxtaposition. The most exquisite of miseries. Lu caught his breath again. It burned inside his lungs, charred the tender tissues there.

Montessa laughed, and it hurt. Cut. It was a slicing sound, mirth and desolation and a special type of wretchedness that only a beautiful, dying woman can experience.

“Do you realize,” she said, “that you might be the only person in this entire world who
even remotely cares about me? You’re angry for me, for the waste of my life. And you’re going to kill me. Do you realize how sick that is? How sad?”

Tear
s illuminated her eyes this time. Made their presence fully known, and it was a horrifying sight. Lu had wanted tears. Hoped for them. Prayed for them, sometimes, and the irony of that wasn’t lost on him. But these tears felt wrong. He wanted to lick them off her face, taste if they were as bitter as they seemed. For the first time, perhaps, he didn’t want to watch the weeping of a woman.

“If you’re the one that cares the most,” she whispered, “then what kind of person am I? To be so unlovable?”

He could say something now. Something to make it better, which he desperately wanted to do for some reason. He could say that Renan was obviously a jerk, that people make mistakes, especially in love. That she wasn’t unlovable. After all, didn’t the men and women at the strip club adore her? Get extra excited whenever Ruby undulated onto the stage? Didn’t she have a magic in her hips and lips that nobody else could match? It was a type of love.

That wasn’t what he wanted to say. It wouldn’t help, it would only hurt.
And he was loath to do that just now, for some reason that he didn’t quite understand.

But he needed to say something. Any small thing. Offer what comfort he could, even if it was only to explore this unusual feeling of not wanting to hurt, crush, kill. If just for a second.

“I’ll make it quick,” he promised her, and the earnestness in his voice terrified him. He meant it. He’d bleed her out quickly, releasing her to the universe at the very first instead of hearing her shriek at every slit, every cut, every pound of the mallet on her tender flesh. Maybe he wouldn’t even play as much afterward. Maybe he would release her and it would be a kindness, perhaps his first, and then he…then what?

“And I’ll take your body to the sea.”

She laughed, and Lu cringed, smarting. He never offered. Never offered things. To have it rejected, well. It stung. More than he would have thought, actually.