Damnation Marked (37 page)
And that was it. That was all Anthony had from Elise’s life: one glove and a cell phone with two hundred pictures.
The phone beeped. He almost dropped it.
When his grip was good again, he saw the “new text message” icon blinking, and he dreaded seeing what James would be trying to send her. He opened the inbox.
The new text wasn’t from James. It was from a number she didn’t have saved to her address book.
39.107619,-120.028424. 00:54 tomorrow. say hi for me. -Ben
Anthony only knew of one Ben who might text Elise—Benjamin Flynn, the teenage prophet in the Union’s employ. He looked up, half-expecting to see the boy in the ward with him, but he didn’t recognize anyone strolling around the beds. They were all doctors, nurses, and witches.
Anthony read the message again.
Those digits were coordinates.
He used Elise’s map application and found them centered over Lake Tahoe.
Say “hi” for me.
A spark of hope bloomed within Anthony. Say “hi” to whom, exactly? Was the text meant for Elise—or did Benjamin know that Anthony would have it?
He had to have known. That kid knew
everything
.
Anthony checked the time. It was getting late. If he wanted to reach the lake by one in the morning, he would have to hurry.
He pulled his pants on, stripped off the paper hospital gown, and headed out of the room as he pulled a Union sweater over his head. Nobody stopped him.
I
t wasn’t easy
to find a working car, but after an hour of searching, Anthony located a pickup with a full tank of gas and the keys abandoned on the dashboard. He only had to run into a few cars to free it from the jam on the freeway.
Boat rentals weren’t much easier to come by in the middle of the night in December. He pounded on windows until someone woke up, and then he gave them the money that had been in his pockets when the Union had stripped him—all eight hundred dollars of his last paycheck.
The lake was black under his boat as he steered toward the middle, not quite sure what he was searching for. Freezing water slopped over the sides.
He shivered in his jeans and jacket, trying to keep his feet out of the puddle at the bottom of the boat. Anthony kept one hand on the rudder and the other on Elise’s cell phone, closing the distance between the dot that indicated his location and the coordinates sent by Benjamin. There was a spotlight mounted on the front of his boat, but he didn’t need it to see. The sky was filled with lush purple snow clouds. The mountain’s icy peaks were a darker shade of gray against the steely clouds.
A freezing wind blasted his hair around his forehead. He crested an arcing wave, and his stomach lurched.
He checked the phone again. It was confused by his position in the middle of the lake, but it looked like he was getting close.
Anthony traveled a few more yards and cut off the motor.
Almost one o’clock.
He was in the right place. It was the right time.
More water slopped over him, splashing his jeans and chilling him to his core. “This is crazy,” he said aloud, jaw chattering. “What was I thinking?”
As if in response, the wind blew harder. He seized the sides of the boat as snow whirled over the water.
Damn it, he hadn’t brought gloves. His fingers were stiff and useless.
Another wave swelled under his boat, and for a moment, all he could see was the gray-purple depths of the water.
When the boat righted itself again, he saw something pale bob to the surface of the water.
His hands weren’t working well enough to get the motor running again—he had to stick his fingers in his mouth for a few seconds to limber them first.
Anthony steered the boat closer. Turned on the floodlight.
It was a body, facedown in the lake, with masses of inky black hair spread around its head. Judging by the shape of the waist and legs, it was a woman.
A naked woman.
Probably a
dead
woman.
“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.” He rubbed his hands on his frozen jeans. “What the hell, Benjamin?”
Snow swirled harder around him as he struggled to bring his boat alongside the body. There was a pole and net underneath the seats. He used it to drag her closer. Careful not to capsize, he snagged a limp arm and dragged it over the side.
The skin was shockingly warm on his cold fingers. It felt more like he had pulled her out of a bath than Lake Tahoe in December. And she weighed nothing—it was easy to drag her legs into the boat. Masses of wet hair stuck to her face and chest.
Something dark marred one of her palms. Anthony grabbed her hand and uncurled the fingers.
There was a mark on her skin—an intricate design imprinted on the palm, more like a brand than a tattoo. A few centimeters below the base of the mark, a long red scar stretched all the way into the corner of her elbow.
It wasn’t the first time he had seen that mark, or that scar.
Anthony’s heart pounded as he drew her shoulders into his lap and shoved the hair out of her face.
She looked like Elise.
Rubbing his eyes and shaking his head didn’t change anything. He wasn’t imagining the resemblance. He wasn’t going crazy. Those were the same lips, cheekbones, and arched nose—except this woman didn’t have the twisted bridge from having her nose broken in a dozen fights. She also had black hair. Black eyebrows. White skin, no freckles.
She coughed. Her chest jerked. Anthony almost dropped her.
Water spilled over her lip, cascading down her chest in waves, too much to have been in her lungs and stomach. Buckets of water.
She gurgled and choked on it, and it was more instinct than rational thought that made Anthony prop her up against his shoulder so that she could vomit into the bottom of the boat.
Her hands bit into his biceps. It hurt. She was too strong. He tried to push her off, and her eyes flew open with a gasp.
They were black. So very, very black.
“Elise?” he asked tentatively, pushing more hair off her forehead.
She screamed. It was a shrill, piercing sound. She threw herself away from him, slipping and falling over the bench. She bumped into the spotlight. It spun on its base.
“Whoa! Wait, be careful—”
She jerked, staring out at the water as if she couldn’t believe the sight of it. Pulled her knees into her chest. Covered her face with her hands, and kept screaming.
Then she held her hands away from her, as though she was frightened of them, and the shrieks cut off.
She lifted her right arm. Stared at the empty palm in the reflection of the spotlight off the water. Ran her fingers down to her elbow, as if she couldn’t believe it was there.
And then she looked past her hand to him.
Recognition sparked in her black eyes.
“Anthony?”
A
N
OTE FROM THE
A
UTHOR
Okay, I know what you're thinking—is that it? No! This is not the end of the series. :) The next book is called
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