Dance with the Devil (2 page)

'Hurry up and get in,' she shouted, 'and be careful of the dressings on your back.'

She helped him in, pulled the mattress over the tub, then carefully eased herself down under it so her back was facing him. Again she blessed the tub's large size.

A bang like an explosion jolted Emma half out of the tub. She orientated the sound, realised a window had smashed under the onslaught, and relaxed back onto the blankets.

A large hand settled on her shoulder. He made no other movement, and she didn't know if he were offering her comfort or seeking it for himself. Surprisingly, she realised, she felt no fear, either from the cyclone or the stranger lying behind her. But then she hadn't been capable of feeling anything very much in the past half hour.

As the minutes lengthened, she felt his hand grow heavy. His breathing deepened and she sensed he had fallen asleep. Her mind kept replaying the events of the past half hour, raising a series of retrospective 'if onlys' that she knew were pointless.

Her mental castigation delayed her feeling the stirring behind her at first, but as she slowly grew aware of it her body tensed.

The hard length of his erection pressed against her bottom. She reached up to grab the edge of the bath, prepared to haul herself out as soon as he made a move. But his hand was still limp, and his breathing had turned into the gentle rumble of the completely exhausted.

'Thank God for the towel,' she muttered.

Glass shattered in another room, sharp, explosive. The old house shuddered, debris crashing like shrapnel into its walls. Emma flinched, and memories of another hiding place flashed into her mind. They'd cringed for three hours in the damaged hut as shells burst around them, she and Hanna. And Hanna had talked, as she always did when the tension became too much for her, of Phillipe.

'The worse the situation was,' Hanna had said, 'the more Phillipe would want to make love. I don't know if it was a primeval urge to procreate in case he didn't survive, or if it was just his body taking his mind off the danger. Perhaps it was a comfort thing.' Her eyes had grown wistful, and Emma knew Hanna was remembering that there had been no time to make love before a landmine had shattered Phillipe's body. So Emma had held onto Hanna's slight but wiry frame and listened to the words, the whine of shells, the staccato crack of gunfire.

Now she felt the warmth of the solid body behind her. She listened to his heavy breathing, the shriek of the cyclone, and the thump of wind-borne projectiles as they smashed into the house. She touched the fingers that lay still on her shoulder, offering the little comfort she could.

In a gloomy hut, a large man picked up a boning knife and ran his finger along its well-honed edge.

The work-roughened hands trembled, and the woman watching shook with fear. She knew what the trembling meant, knew the rage, the frustration it betrayed. She had lived with it for many years, but had seen it unleashed only as many times as the fingers on her hands, and she lived in terror of the day it would be directed at her. Now she knew that day had come.

'He was dead.' Her voice shook in tempo with her body. 'The lightning had hit him and knocked you unconscious. I knew we had to get rid of the body - I pushed it into the river. If it's found, they'll think he died in the cyclone.' The lies tumbled out, saliva spitting like mist. The lies sounded less convincing now than when she'd rehearsed them as she'd driven back from the doctor's property.

She looked up at her husband, at the black eyes reflecting the glow of the single naked bulb illuminating the shed. She'd taken an incredible risk knocking him unconscious and setting the Defender free, but she couldn't let him carry out the crucifixion. She understood his motivation - didn't her own heart ache with inconsolable loss? - but killing was against God's law, and she couldn't allow him to risk his immortal soul.

For all their married life, they had lived according to the very letter of the Holy Bible, and her fear of God's retribution was greater than her fear of her husband's anger.

The man looked down at the woman cowering against the shed wall. Blood pounded through his veins, pulsing behind his eyes, and he gritted his teeth with the effort of controlling it. He forced himself to breathe in deeply, breathe out slowly.

Gradually the roaring sound like ocean waves eased from his mind, and he realised his right hand was raised above his head, a gleaming blade jutting from his fist. He turned away, his left hand rubbing his face and knuckling across his forehead.

He shouldn't have brought the Defender here, but he hadn't been sure what God wanted him to do. It had been easy with the Offender, the Bible had spoken to him -
If your eye offends God, pluck it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off
. He had held the Offender's soft flesh in his hand, felt it shrink as terror widened the fear-dilated eyes, then pain convulse the body as the knife sliced…

His wife's hand touched his arm.

'Please, Hadley. Let's go into the house before the winds get worse.'

Hadley looked down at the woman, at the blonde hair silvered with grey, her soft eyes pleading in the lined face. She had been distressed when he'd brought the Defender here. She didn't understand that he had to do God's bidding and make reparation. But he loved her. She was a good woman, and she had suffered enough.

He wouldn't bring the others here.

He wouldn't have to.

He knew now how they must die.

Blackness. So intense it was suffocating.

Drew fought to quell the panic rising in his gut, and waited for the footsteps that heralded another duel with the devil. A verbal duel, very one-sided, because he only had questions and the devil knew the answers but refused to talk in anything but riddles. Or parables.

But something was different. There was softness beneath his fingertips. Warmth and softness that made him ache to feel more. And scent. A woman's scent. Not perfume, but a fresh fragrance of clean skin, feminine skin; soft skin that enticed him with the promise of pleasure. He felt his reaction to it, the ache that pulsed through his body, the yearning for something good and sweet and loving to take him from his hellhole.

The blackness grew thicker, more solid. The devil was back, taunting him, cursing him. The devil swung the mallet and pain sliced through his foot and he heard his groan echo in the darkness.

'It's all right. You're safe. No-one's going to hurt you. I knocked your foot. I'm sorry.'

The voice was mellow and smooth as melted butter. The woman - her voice. Her hand moved over his chest, and his heart thumped rapidly against her cool palm. Memory returned in a rush.

'It's okay.' He hesitated, felt his sweat slick under her fingers. He took a deep, slow breath. 'I was just…dreaming.'

She must have pushed the mattress back because cooler air rushed over him. The intensity of the wind had eased, but now the rain poured down in torrential persistence. He tried to make out details of the woman's shape, but pushing the mattress off the bath had done little to lessen the solid feel of the blackness.

'I'm just going to get the candles and matches I stored in here.' Her hand moved away and her voice became disembodied. 'Don't move until I get some light going.'

Drew heard her climb out and grope in the darkness. Soon a pale yellow light flickered shadows across the walls. The flame reflected in amber eyes that gazed assessingly down at him. Eyes that seemed too big in a pale face with delicate high cheekbones and framed by hair in wild disarray, like toffee spun from a madman's spoon.

'Stay here.'

It was an order, and his reaction was instantaneous. 'Why?'

'I'm going to the kitchen to get some hot tea. I think we could both use it.'

Before Drew could speak, she walked out the door, a flickering shadow disappearing off the wall. He realised then that she'd left another lighted candle on the handbasin.

Who the hell was she? She'd said she was a doctor, and his bandaging looked professional. Was that why he'd been dumped here? So she could look after him? Or was she another step in the psychological torture he had endured for the past week? Perhaps the cyclone had disrupted whatever plans the devil had for finishing him off. Perhaps even now the woman who called herself a doctor was phoning the devil and telling where to find him. The doubts tumbled around in his mind, making his head throb.

Whatever the answer, he couldn't just lie there and wait to see what would happen. Cautiously he managed to haul himself out of the bathtub and stand up. The pain in his feet swirled a grey mist across his eyes but he clenched his teeth and waited until it cleared.

Damn! He wouldn't have a chance of escaping if the devil arrived now. He'd better pray this woman was what she seemed.

Holding the candle, he walked gingerly down the hallway towards the light he could see at the far end. With his free hand, he steadied himself against the wall, the tongue-and-groove timber smooth beneath his fingers.

The hallway ended in a large, old-fashioned kitchen, dominated at one end by a sturdy wooden table and six chairs, and at the other by an old wood stove with a kookaburra emblazoned on the green oven door. A kerosene lamp on the bench cast warm light over the room.

The woman wasn't there. For a moment, he panic surged through his chest. Where the hell had she gone? To get the man he had called 'the devil'?

A movement beyond the doorway of the opposite room caught his attention. He looked around for something to arm himself with, but before he could act the woman walked back into the kitchen.

'I told you to stay in the bathroom!' Exasperation showed on her expressive face. 'You shouldn't be moving around too much. You'll start your feet bleeding again.'

She skirted the table and pulled out a chair. 'Sit down.'

Her tone indicated she was used to being obeyed, and he instinctively rebelled against doing so, but the pain in his feet left him no choice. He shuffled to the chair and sat.

'Where did you go?' He hadn't meant the question to be so abrupt, but with what he'd been through it was hard to maintain his equilibrium.

Opening a cupboard door, she bent down and picked up a gas camping stove. She placed it on the bench, turning her head slightly to talk to him.

'The electricity went off when the cyclone first hit, but we have this and a wood stove so cooking's no problem. I just had to light the old kerosene fridge in the laundry. As soon as it's cold, I'll move the food over from the one in the kitchen.'

She connected the stove to a large gas cylinder in the cupboard, lit one burner, filled a copper kettle and placed it on the flame. Within seconds she had mugs and a teapot ready, then sat across the table from Drew.

'What's your name?'

He studied her face. He'd thought her eyes were amber, but now he saw they were more like rich dark sherry, with liquid depths a man could drown in. Warm, sincere eyes, with lashes so long and delicate against her pale skin she reminded him of a porcelain doll.

'Drew. Drew Jarrett. Who are you?'

Emma took a deep breath. She could feel the frustration simmering beneath the surface of the man, the fierce emotions held tightly in check.

'Emma Randall.' She chose her next words carefully. 'Who did…this…to you, Drew?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know!' Emma found it impossible to keep the incredulity out of her voice. 'Were you blindfolded?'

'Masked, actually. A hood, it covered my head, taped at the neck, with just a slit so I could eat and drink. Chained, so I couldn't reach up to take it off - or escape. And drugged, so I'd be compliant.'

The calm, flat tone of Drew's voice and the pictures his words evoked sent a shiver down Emma's spine.

'How did they drug you?'

'In the food.'

'Why did you eat it? Didn't you realise?'

'Yes. But it's difficult to refuse with a gun muzzle against your forehead.'

Emma shuddered. In her work, she had seen the cruelty one human being could inflict upon another, had dealt with the physical and psychological effects of that cruelty, but she still found such cold-blooded viciousness abhorrent. She tried to imagine the terror she would have felt in the same situation. Being trapped by military battles was one thing, frightening enough when it had happened, but to be chained like an animal…

'How long were you chained up?'

'A week. At least I think it was a week. I tried to keep track of the days but the drugs he gave me made it hard to concentrate. I kept falling asleep.'

'How else did the drugs affect you?'

'Where is this place?'

Emma blinked at his sudden shift. He had answered her questions easily enough, but now suspicion lurked in his eyes. He didn't trust her, she could see that, but it worked both ways. She didn't trust him either. He looked like he could be a feral, one of the dropouts from society who lived wild in the bush. He didn't talk like one, she reasoned, but not all ferals came from the lower socio-economic strata, there were even a few professionals who'd found modern life too stressful and dropped out. She remembered her father telling her, in one of his lucid moments, that there was a band of them up in the hills a few years back who'd built teepees and danced around campfires like American Indians.

The whistle of the kettle interrupted her train of thought. When she placed two steaming mugs of tea on the table, she almost offered to hold Drew's for him, but the stubborn gleam in his eyes and the sliver of distrust had her sitting down again.

'This is O'Connor Valley. It runs back up towards the mountains south-south-west of Cairns. Where do you live?'

He frowned. 'Cairns.'

In the silence that followed, Emma sighed. He certainly wasn't keen on giving any information away, but if he were going to stay here with her for any length of time, and by the sound of the torrential downpour outside it was highly probable, then she needed to know what she was dealing with.

'How did you get here?'

The faint tightening of his mouth indicated his reluctance to answer. Emma strove to contain her impatience. Her nerves were starting to frazzle. Today's events were threatening to crack the self-discipline she'd gained through years of working in war-torn and disaster-plagued countries.