Aubrielle's Call (25 page)

The box is too big, but there are things I can’t leave behind.

Inside were his ships papers for John Larson, and his identification papers for the British citizen John Locke. He slid both into the inside pocket of his jacket.

He picked up the leather bag and weighed it in his palm. The treasures it contained were irreplaceable, links in a chain trailing back across centuries.

An engraved silver band Alyse had worn for over 40 years. A brass key, with the number seventeen, etched into the head. The tarnished key to the house in Denver and more.

He shoved the pouch into his trouser pocket, along with a handful of francs, and then replaced the lid on the box.
He checked the gun clip then slid the revolver beneath the belt at the small of his back. The leather holster he wrapped around the sheets and carried the weapons bundle out the door.

In the alley, Maurice helped Mae into his car. “I am taking her to the hospital. She fainted after you left.” He eyed the bed sheets and holster in John’s arms. “Make him pay.”

“I intend to.” He bent and looked through the car window at Mae.

She rolled down the window. “Bring her home, please, John.”

“I’ll try to come back.” He pressed his lips. “But if we can’t get back to Paris, I’ll take her to safety. I promise. Thank you, Mae. For everything.”

Mae covered her mouth with her hands and nodded, unable to speak as tears raced down her cheeks.

“
Bonne chance
, John Larson.” Maurice gave his shoulder a pat then moved quickly around the car.

“I’m going with them,” Henri said.

“Here.” John dangled his keys from his fingers. “Take these. Let the butcher know I’ve left. Take the food and clothes if you want them.” He paused and gave Henri a meaningful stare. “There’s a box in the dresser that means something to me. I’d like for you to have it.”

“Thank you, John.” Henri took the keys. “Good luck,
mon am
i.” He folded himself into the car’s back seat and closed the door.

John watched Maurice drive down the alley and turn onto the street. As soon as the car wasn’t visible anymore, John raced between the buildings toward François’s truck. The old vehicle remained parked across from Mae’s bakery, fueled and maintained should François or Billy return for it.

John slid the sheet-shrouded submachine guns across the truck’s bench seat and climbed in. The old vehicle roared to life while a bee-sting compass-point pounded urgency against his skull.

CHAPTER 33

The scarred man forced Aubrielle to kneel on the floorboard of the back seat of his automobile. He ran the cold barrel of his gun along her neck then laughed as he pushed her head to her knees. “Keep your head down and your mouth shut until I say otherwise.
C’est compris?
”

Her wrists, tied together with the same coarse twine he’d forced her use on
Tante
Mae, were sticky. Her hands smelled of blood.
Mae’s blood.

She couldn’t get the image out of her mind. The constant reproach repeated in her mind.

I knew better than to open the door. I knew better. I knew.

As soon as she had, the man stepped past her, and struck Mae hard with his fist. It slammed into Mae’s surprised face, knocking her to the floor where she lay still, bleeding from her nose and mouth.

Before Aubrielle had been able to manage more than a gasp, the man held a gun to her head and began giving orders.

Folded over her knees, she watched the brief slant of light illuminate her tight prison before it moved back into darkness, until the next streetlight.

The carpet beneath her nose reeked of spoiled wine and urine. Nausea twisted in her stomach.

Why had he taken her?

There were other men in the car. The driver and a passenger in the front seat, her and the marked man in the back. The three men spoke sparingly, mostly grunts of acknowledgment or brief questions about direction. They headed north.

Once the light from the streetlamps ceased, and the cab remained dark, her kidnapper spoke, as though he read her mind.

“You must wonder why you’re here.”

Amused laughter came from the front seat.

Aubrielle swallowed. The pain along her thighs and back from the uncomfortable position made it hard to take a full breath. She shook her head.

“Come now. You have questions. I know you do.” He gave the leather seat beside her ear a pat. “We are out of the city. Sit up here with me.”

She attempted to straighten her spine, to raise her shoulders, but the muscles in her back seized and cramped.

“She tries my patience already.” The marked man grabbed her arm and yanked her up, wrenching her shoulder.

Her legs straightened as he pulled her onto the seat by his side. Her limbs felt dead and disconnected from her body, appendages too heavy to lift. The cramping pain in her back and shoulder masked the touch of his hand on her breast. Until he pinched.

She gasped and tried to pull away, but her legs wouldn’t move. She could only bend forward.

He pushed her down on the seat, her head near the door, and ran his hand up her leg.

Even in the darkness, she was close enough to see there were no handles. No way to open the door or window. No way to escape.

He yanked her skirt up and ran his hands over her hips.

“Stop it. Stop.” Aubrielle kicked out, and tiny stinging knives flashed along her legs as blood flow returned.

He grabbed one of her legs and flipped her onto her back, putting her ankle between his ribs and the cushion. He pushed her other leg against the back side of the front seat with his foot, spreading her legs wide.

“If you’re going to fuck her we need to stop. Bruce will wreck trying to watch.” The passenger turned in the seat. “Besides, I want
cette petite chatte,
too.”

“You said we weren’t to kill her,” the driver said.

“No. We can’t kill her. He can’t follow us if she’s dead,” the marked man replied.

“How will he know?”

“He’ll know. The baroness told me he must find her when her life is threatened. He can sense her.”

“If we’re not going to kill her—”

“We’re not, but Baroness Nescato will. She’ll gut this little French fish like a flounder.” His hand ran up the inside of her thigh, and he flipped her full skirt over her face. “Make no mistake. Her life is in terrible danger.”

“No!” Aubrielle screamed and kicked wildly. She freed her leg from beneath his shoe and swung it toward his head.

He knocked it away and laughed again.

She batted the skirt from her face and used her elbows to drag herself away from him across the seat.

He held one of her legs pinned between himself and the seat. He leaned over and ran his tongue along her naked thigh.

Aubrielle shrieked and hit his head with her tied hands. “No. No. No.”

“So feisty.” He grabbed her wrists and yanked her upright. “I like it when you scream.”

The car careened off the road for a moment, bouncing along the ungraded shoulder, then back onto the gravel.

“I told you we need to stop. Once we all have our turn with her, we will continue.”

“He’ll be coming,” the scarred man said, and licked his lips. “He always comes for you, but you wouldn’t know this, would you?”

The car slowed. “If we go too far we’ll run into French and British troops.”

“We only need to keep ahead of John Larson. Once our panzer division makes it through the Ardennes, they will sweep across France to the channel, separating us from him. How Larson reaches this little bitch after the baroness has her is of no concern to me.”

“What does the baroness want with her if she’s only going to gut her?”

“Nescato doesn’t want this little bitch. She wants John Larson or whatever name he’s using now. The baroness confided to me she has searched for this man for nearly two thousand years.”

The driver turned down a dirt road as they laughed from the front seat.

“You said this baroness was a young beauty. She sounds like an old hag.”

“A very old hag.”

“She’s a witch and never ages, just like her mate, John Larson.”

Aubrielle’s adrenaline fueled thoughts could make no sense of their conversation.

John’s mate? Two thousand years old? A witch would gut her?

Panic robbed her of rational thought.

The vehicle stopped, and both men in the front seat got out. The back door opened, and the marked man slid out of the car, his grip never lessening on her wrists.

Aubrielle fell to the ground as he dragged her from the car, but he yanked her back to her feet. “Walk.”

“Up in the headlights, so we can watch.” The one they called Bruce walked ahead of them.

Karl gripped her above the elbow and pushed her ahead of him to where the driver waited.

When they reached the light from the headlights, he spun her around and ground his mouth down on her lips so hard she tasted blood. Then he shoved her backward.

Aubrielle stumbled, desperate to stay on her feet.

Rough hands grabbed her and yanked her wrists up and over his head. When he straightened, both of her shoulders popped. Her back to his stomach, she dangled down the man's chest. Her tied wrists secured behind his neck, her toes barely touching the ground. He pulled her tucked shirt out of the waist of her skirt and ran his calloused hands up her bare skin to her breasts.

She could smell his fetid breath at the side of her face.

His fingers slid beneath the elastic of her
brassiere
and pulled up, freeing her breasts to his hands.

She kicked him and screamed as he bit down on her ear.

A single gunshot echoed in the night, and her assailant froze.

In front of her, a bullet hole appeared in the side of the driver’s forehead. He stared back into her eyes as he fell.

Her attacker shoved her arms from around his neck and pushed her to the ground. “Where? Where?” He dodged out of the beam of the headlights and into the darkness.

Aubrielle didn’t see where Karl went or hear his response if he made one. She balanced on her elbows and knees as she stared into the eyes of a dead man. Panting with terror, her vision spun, and she lowered her forehead to the dirt, her bound wrists stretched before her.
“Sainte mère de Dieu, protégez-moi!”

“John.” She whispered his name, unsure if it was a prayer, a wish, or a talisman against evil, she only knew he was out there. If she could stay alive, he would come for her.

The crack of a gunshot nearby brought her head up. Kneeling in the headlamp beam made her an easy target.

Move.

She struggled to her feet and staggered to the side of the car, out of the light and into a void of darkness. She squeezed her eyes shut and blinked, hoping to gain some night vision, but her eyes couldn’t adjust swiftly enough.

Out of the black, an arm circled her neck and pulled her upright. The barrel of a gun pressed against her side. “Back into the light. I want him to see you.”

Who would see her? John?

She tried to inhale past the arm around her throat as the man pulled her back into the light.

In the middle of the headlight beam, Karl stopped and put the gun to her head. “I know it’s you, Larson. If I’m going to die so is your little Jewish girl. Show yourself.”

John moved in front of the headlight, his outline black against the bright beam.

“Drop the machine-gun,” Karl demanded.

The weapon fell from his hand.

“If you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”

John!

Tears of relief slid from the corner of her eyes, yet something was different. There was a bloodless resonance in his voice. A flat and haunted inflection. Daunting. Deadly.

“I’ve already hurt her, what can you do?” Karl laughed without humor. “Take another step and I’ll put a bullet through her brain.”

John stopped walking forward. “And then what would happen to you?”

“I would die. So what? Everyone dies, John Larson.” Karl pulled her back a step. “Everyone except you and Baroness Nescato.”

“There are worse things than death.” John’s voice dropped low. “I’d be happy to demonstrate how truly painful it can be to remain alive.”

Karl barked a laugh. “Fuck your threats. You are nothing compared to Nescato. She is absolute evil.” He waved his gun in the air. “She is—”

John drew his sidearm and fired.

Aubrielle’s abductor fell back, taking her with him. Off-balance she fell, although Karl no longer held her neck. She landed on her side, half on top of Karl. Before she could push away from the dead man, she was lifted to her feet.

John pulled her to his chest and held her close. “Are you hurt?” He held her away and studied her. “He said he hurt you.”

She shook her head. “He scared me—threatened me. That’s all.” Now that she was safe, and the men who abducted her were dead, she couldn’t stop the tears. She sobbed and held her breath as John untied her wrists, then she was again pressed against his chest, surrounded by arms.

“I about lost my mind,” he murmured into her hair. “When the engine in the truck failed two miles back, I thought I’d lost you forever. I grabbed one of the machine-guns and ran.”

“How did you find me?” She pushed back and tried to study his face in the shadowed light. “And Mae. Did you find Mae?”

“Yes we did, and she’ll be fine.” He pushed the hair from her forehead, then cupped her face with both hands. “As for how I found you, your heartbeat called me.” He pulled her close again.

She leaned her head against his chest. “I want to go home.” She wrapped her arms around John’s waist and relaxed into the warmth and safety of his body.