Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete Collection (2 page)

Jolee wiggled around in the trunk. There was
nothing back there—made more room for bodies, she assumed
dismally—just a tire iron and a jack and a set of jumper cables.
All great weapons if she could have gotten her hands free, but the
zip ties were drawn so tight behind her back the circulation had
long ago disappeared from her fingers. She could still feel her
feet though, and that was what she used, slamming both of them
against the latch of the trunk.

There was no way to disguise what she was
doing. She knew the guys would hear her. The music stopped blaring
almost immediately. She was probably denting the hell out of
Carlos’s car. The thought,
he’s going to kill me
, crossed
her mind and she gave a strangled, crazed half-laugh, kicking
again, again, again.

“What the fuck? Bitch! Knock it the hell
off!” She recognized the voice. One of the guys who’d grabbed her,
an older man, her father’s age, someone she remembered seeing
around the logging camps and later, at her husband’s office.

She heard him yelling but didn’t stop. If
they pulled over now and shot her in the head it wouldn’t matter.
This was her one chance, her last chance, a last gasp for a final
breath.

When the trunk popped open, Jolee screamed
in triumph behind her duct tape mask. She had time to see a gun
metal expanse of winter sky and fat flakes of snow still falling
outside, her nostrils flaring as she filled them with a sharp, cold
intake of air, before the car stopped.

But it didn’t just stop. The impact was so
sudden Jolee was tossed toward the front of the BMW, hitting her
head against the car jack. She felt something floppy on her
forehead, wetness flooding her eye, stinging, but then she was
flying and couldn’t think about that anymore, thrown out of the
open trunk into a foot of heavy snow.

The landing was hard, so hard she couldn’t
breathe, but her head hurt the most and the last thing she
remembered was hearing a scream, a wild animal cry of pain and
death and horror, and she wondered briefly if she was making that
awful noise before the world went black.

* * * *

Silas had been following the animal for over
a mile. His father taught him long ago that hunting should be
something a man did honorably, so tracking in the snow seemed a bit
unfair, but he was carrying a bow, not a gun, and the elk had a
good quarter mile head-start. Besides, the animal was a thousand
pounds and bulls were known to charge any hunter forced to get too
close. Silas was careful to stay downwind. He had two arrows
ready—elk often ran, even after a kill shot, and he was ready to
track it for the second if he needed to—but it turned out he only
needed one.

The first shot was good, clean, a chest hit,
surely puncturing the animal’s lung, possibly piercing the heart.
And still, the big bull ran, bellowing as it bounded through the
trees, heading for the old logging road. It wasn’t much of a road
at all, just a two-track, and very few people knew about it—most of
them dead. His brother, Carlos, only had it plowed or graded for
“special occasions.”

It all happened far too quickly for Silas to
do anything but bear witness. He heard the animal cry, a
horrifying, sorrowful squall, but by the time he’d reached a
clearing near the road, following both the elk’s tracks and the
blood trail, events had already been set in motion. The first thing
he noted, setting aside a rising anger at the sight, was that the
two-track had been freshly plowed. The foot of snow they’d received
overnight—nothing compared to the two more they were supposed to
get over the next few days—had already been cleared from the narrow
road.

The elk had bolted across the gravel path,
not afraid or cautious of anything that looked like a road this far
from civilization, and probably too weak from the arrow to jump far
out of the way of the oncoming vehicle. Instead, it had tumbled
sideways onto the hood of the BMW, its huge rack—calcified this
time of year and sharpened to dangerous points on tree
bark—shattering the glass, puncturing the air bag, and skewering
the driver of the vehicle to his seat.

The other airbag had either malfunctioned or
was nonexistent, because the passenger had gone airborne through
the windshield, his body sprawled over that of the elk on the hood,
limp and unmoving. There was so much blood Silas couldn’t tell from
an immediate assessment which was human and which was elk. But the
elk was still alive, the arrow rising out of its side as it
struggled to free itself, the pulling and tugging of its head
making the driver do a bloody dance in his seat.

Silas moved to the front of the car and
raised his bow, making it quick and fast, easing the animal’s
suffering and silencing its cries. He surveyed the scene,
understanding immediately. He monitored the old two-track
regularly, even though it was miles from his own cabin, knowing
Carlos’s penchant for using it, but he hadn’t been down this way in
a few weeks. He recognized the two men as Carlos’s, in spite of
their disfiguring wounds.

Probably the same men who had taken
Isabelle, he thought, a slow heat burning in his chest as he
assessed the damage. The memory of his wife was always close to the
surface, and although his life out here was full and far from idle,
it was also quiet and lonely and left him a great deal of time to
think about her. He couldn’t help imagining them carrying her out
of his house while they left him, drugged and duct taped to a
chair, in their burning cabin. What had they done with her? Where
was she now?

There was no movement from either body, and
they were probably dead—or would be soon if they weren’t
already—and he was glad. He might have killed them himself if he’d
found them barreling down this road, off to carry through with
Carlos’s orders. God only knows what he had them doing.

He ran a hand over his own marred cheek,
self-conscious—an emotion he didn’t feel much out here—reminding
himself that at least he’d lived through his ordeal, although there
had been plenty of times he’d wished he hadn’t. Slowly, he had
discovered purpose in his life again—to protect his father’s land
and to find his wife’s body. He was sure they’d killed her. He
prayed they hadn’t raped her. The thought of these two men anywhere
near his wife made his chest burn with rage.

Silas slung his bow over his shoulder,
circling the vehicle. He would have to extract the buck and get it
back to his cabin. But what to do with the car and the two bodies?
His train of thought was completely derailed as he came around the
trunk, seeing it popped open. The woman had been thrown clear of
the vehicle, but she was lifeless on her side, a pool of blood
melting the snow around her head.

He went down to one knee beside her body,
checking her throat for a pulse and finding one, strong and steady.
Then he checked her for wounds, finding only one, a gash on her
head that was bleeding profusely, but it wasn’t deep or fatal. He
couldn’t tell if she had any broken bones, but the head wound
needed to be addressed first.

Unzipping his parka, he peeled up his layers
of clothing until he got to the long underwear closest to his skin.
Using his hunting knife, he cut a solid piece away out of the
front, folding it up and pressing it against the woman’s head. She
didn’t stir or cry out at all. He opened one of her eyes with thumb
and finger. Her pupil retracted in the fading light of the sun and
he sighed in relief as the other did the same when he checked
it.

She looked young, a good ten years younger
than he was—maybe early twenties. It was hard to tell with all the
duct tape wrapped around her mouth, but there were very few lines
in the skin around her eyes and none across her forehead, and her
hair was dark and long and lustrous, no hint of gray. She was
exotic-looking—maybe Native American, he guessed, cradling her head
in his hand and using his other to press against her forehead,
applying enough pressure to get the bleeding to stop, and
waiting.

It was quiet. The wildlife had scattered,
frightened away by the accident. He could sense them quivering,
watching—rabbits, foxes, coyotes, joined for the moment in silence
as they waited for the outcome of this strange event. The trees
above him creaked under the weight of the snow on their bare limbs.
It had been hovering near the freezing point for days, making the
precipitation heavy and wet.

Silas looked over at the car, noticing the
vanity plate. It was his brother’s BMW all right. Only someone as
arrogant as Carlos would send men in a car with his own vanity
plate on it to commit a murder. The car had stalled on impact but
the engine was still ticking as it cooled. His brother would
certainly wonder what had become of his BMW and his trusty
sidekicks. Carlos would send someone to look for them. Perhaps he
would even come himself. The thought of seeing and confronting his
brother was tempting, but as he looked back down at the woman on
the snow, he reminded himself of the reason he’d stayed hidden all
this time. Isabelle first. Then he would deal with Carlos.

Long enough, he judged, peeling the cloth
away from the woman’s head to check, blood blooming on the material
like a red flower. It was still seeping, but it had slowed. He
worked quickly, using his hunting knife to cut the zip ties on her
wrists and ankles, carefully, gently peeling the duct tape from her
skin. When he had her free, he stopped to gaze down at her, struck
by how like Isabelle she looked, all that dark hair, those red
lips. She even had the same body type, tall and full-bodied. The
poor thing didn’t even have a coat— just jeans and a turtleneck—and
his jaw tightened when he noted the dark stain between her thighs.
Must have been terrified, he thought, trying not to compare this
woman to his wife, trying not to think about her fate, wondering if
Isabelle, too, had wet herself before they had killed her.

He checked the woman’s wound again. It would
need stitches, but he couldn’t do that here. At least it had
stopped bleeding. He used the remains of the duct tape to fashion a
make-shift bandage, securing the material over the cut. The woman
was cold, already far too cold. He looked around again, listening.
Still quiet. Glancing up, he watched the snow falling around them
growing heavier. There was no car coming after this one any time
soon, he judged, and if they got as much snow as the radio had been
predicting, there wouldn’t be one for days.

The whole thing was a big mess. He could
bring the snowmobile back for the elk, but he couldn’t leave the
woman here to freeze in the meantime. He unzipped his parka and
wrapped her in it, zipping her arms in, making her an
easy-to-handle bundle. She was dead weight but he lifted her
easily, getting his head under her torso, using a fireman’s carry
as he squatted with her over his shoulders.

For the first time, she made a noise, and he
wondered when she was going to come to. What was he going to tell
her? At least she couldn’t see his face from this angle, he
thought, using the big muscles in his thighs to help him rise to
standing. The girl over his shoulders sighed again and he
stiffened, waiting, but she stilled. He wondered what the poor girl
had done to arouse Carlos’s wrath. Refused him perhaps? That’s all
Isabelle had ever done—she’d chosen one brother over the other. Of
course, Carlos hadn’t killed her over that, although Silas was sure
it had been, at least in part, some of his brother’s motivation.
Carlos had killed her because Isabelle was Silas’s only heir. She
would have inherited all the land their father had left to Silas
that Carlos had been determined to get his hands on.

He shifted the girl’s weight, balancing her
on his shoulders. There was nothing to do but take her back to the
cabin and he couldn’t get there by car. It was a mile on foot and
the sun would be setting by the time he arrived home. He grabbed
his bow and took another look around at the accident site, marking
the location in his memory. It would be dark when he came back, and
the falling snow would cover his tracks.

It was going to be a long night.

* * * *

She drifted in.

Her head throbbed. It felt too big on her
neck, wobbling around up there, hard to hold up. The man in the
camouflage hunting mask held her head, made her drink water. His
face floated in front of her like a demon, and the first time she
saw him, she screamed and tried to scramble away. It came out only
as a whimper and a shuffling of her feet under the covers, but in
her head she was running for the door. She choked on the water and
it dribbled down her chin. The man wiped at her with a cloth and
they tried again. He didn’t speak and it scared her, but she didn’t
say anything either. Did she have a voice? She tried to vocalize
and just croaked, an unintelligible noise. He shook his head and
wiped her mouth once more, offering her water. She shook her own
head, and the movement sent shards of glass rolling around through
her skull.

She drifted out again.

* * * *

It took Silas almost a full day to clean and
dress the elk. He started in the early morning as the snow came
down heavily outside the shed, making it hard to even see the house
through the little window on the side. He stopped every hour to
wipe his hands on his apron and trudge back to the house to check
on the woman, just opening the bedroom door a crack, too afraid to
show himself, masked and blood-stained. She’d think he was a serial
killer for sure.

She slept on. The room with its twin bed
served mostly as extra storage. He boxes full of books and
magazines stacked against the walls and tools littered the floor.
He had thought about putting her closer, in his own room, but there
was only the one bed, and she was already afraid of him. Not that
he blamed her. The poor girl clearly had plenty to be afraid of,
and he couldn’t expect her to trust him.