Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete Collection (3 page)

There had been nothing to tell him who she
was, no purse or wallet, no identification at all, and the woman
was silent, like a beautiful ornament tucked away in his spare
room. He had been forced to get her out of her wet clothes,
undressing her quickly, doing his best to just take care of
business, but he couldn’t help his reaction. He’d almost forgotten
he wasn’t an animal, a monster living in the middle of the woods,
but a flesh and blood man.

She was a stunning beauty, her tawny against
the dark waves of her hair, her limbs long and lean. He checked
them carefully for breaks, her skin almost painfully soft in his
hands, like velvet. Her flesh was too much of a temptation and he
was embarrassed by his raw, immediate response, glad when he was
done and she was dressed and tucked back under the covers.

He took a break to try to feed her some
turkey noodle soup about mid-day, but she just stared at him, her
speech fuzzy, eyes glazed. He drank the soup himself instead,
watching her drift off again and wondering if he should take her to
the hospital. There was no way to get there that day anyway, he
decided, even though he’d just winterized the Duramax. The snow was
thick and heavy with ice and already another foot had fallen
overnight. The main roads would be difficult and the back ones
impassable, even with his plow.

Once the elk was taken care of, Silas took a
shower, standing outside in the cold under the nozzle attached to
the side of the shed. He could run the well on the diesel generator
or use the hand-pump inside and there was a composting toilet and a
sink in the bathroom in the cabin, but no shower. He’d never
installed one, never saw the point. He got dirty outside, might as
well wash off the dirt outside, he figured. Besides, the needling,
freezing spray felt like good punishment, the warmth of the
woodstove in the house a relief when he came back in, dripping wet,
to dry by the fire.

Then there was another mess to clean up.

He tried feeding the woman again, but she
just groaned and rolled over and slept. It was a gamble, but he
decided to leave her. She probably wouldn’t wake at all, he told
himself, and if she did, who would be crazy enough to go out in
this storm? Only him. He didn’t take the diesel Arctic Cat—he made
his own biodiesel fuel—but instead had gone on foot in snowshoes,
not wanting to draw attention to himself if someone had discovered
the accident.

The car and the bodies were where he had
left them, undisturbed. The extra foot of snow now covering the
two-track made it tough going. The BMW got stuck twice, and riding
in the blood-and-gore-covered driver’s seat left him in desperate
need of another shower. He’d stowed the bodies in the back, both of
them cold but the remains of rigor mortis beginning to fade, making
them easier to move.

He drove twenty minutes before he found the
spot he was looking for, a place where the road dropped off on the
right into a ravine. It was thick with trees down there and a creek
bed ran through in the summer. It was mostly frozen now. Silas put
the car in neutral and pushed it over the edge. The front end
crumpled, accordion-style, before momentum flipped the BMW onto its
roof, wheels spinning.

It wasn’t the best solution, but at least it
looked like an accident, and there was no missing elk begging
explanation. He covered his tracks to the woods and went back to
the accident site. There was a great deal of blood in the snow and
he did his best to cover that. They were going to get at least
another foot of snow overnight again, and that would help. He
covered his tracks again to the woods and started the walk on
snowshoes back to the cabin.

He was nearly home when he saw a deer and
thought of his bow, sitting in the shed. He had a gun in his belt—a
good piece to take care of business, a .357 magnum, but nothing to
hunt with. He faced the buck and its head came up when it heard
him. The deer turned tail and bounded off further into the
woods.

No sense being greedy, he thought. The meat
from the elk would be more than plenty to feed him through the
winter, along with the various turkey and pheasant and deer and
rabbit in the freezer.
Feed us
, he corrected himself,
walking a little more quickly as he neared the clearing where his
cabin stood. He was careful to remove the camouflage hunting mask
from his pocket and pull it back on.

The woman had been sleeping when he left to
take care of the car and the bodies and he was sure she would be
still, but he was worried. She still hadn’t spoken, and although
her pupils continued to be normal size and responded to light, he
didn’t like to consider things like concussions and brain swelling
and hemorrhage, but he had to keep an eye out.

He went around the cabin, heading for the
shed—and another shower—when he saw the woman standing just outside
the shed door, still wearing his t-shirt. It came to mid-thigh and
she was barefoot in the snow, staring at the mess inside. The shed
was still full of blood and gore and tissue from butchering the
elk. His heart sank when she turned and saw him, masked and bloody,
and she let out a choked cry at the sight.

Her gaze darted quickly from him to the
cabin to the woods, and he waited for her to run, but she didn’t.
He saw it beginning to happen and barely made it to her side before
she collapsed, muttering something under her breath. Now they were
both a bloody mess again. He sighed, looking down at the woman’s
bandaged head.
She’s still sleeping,
he realized, seeing how
her eyes moved beneath her eyelids when they closed. He hoped
whatever dream she was having didn’t involve bloody masked men. He
lifted her easily and carried her into the house.

* * * *

She drifted in.

And this time she did scream. She was
restrained, a makeshift zip-tie handcuff attached to her wrist,
another looped around the bedpost. She pulled and pulled, thrashing
on the bed, kicking off the covers. It was the first time she
realized she was wearing a man’s button-down shirt and nothing
else. Where were her clothes?

The man in the mask appeared in the doorway,
the light behind him making him loom like a god. He came swiftly to
her side, his big hands pulling the covers back up, smoothing her
hair. He could cradle her whole head in his palm. The man was a
giant.

“Where am I?” she croaked, confused and
horrified at his gentle touch. “Who are you?”

“My name is…” He hesitated, sighed. “Silas.
And you’re in my cabin in the woods.”

She let that information sink in, trying to
get the world to make some sense.

“Why am I tied up?” She pulled at the zip
tie again, whimpering.

“You were walking in your sleep,” he
explained. “You went outside in your bare feet. It’s snowing.”

She didn’t remember that at all.

“Who am I?” she whispered, reaching up to
touch her throbbing head. There was a thick bandage there.

The man was quiet. Then he said, “I was
hoping you could tell me.”

She didn’t remember that either.

* * * *

Silas couldn’t deny his relief—she was
getting better, eating now, getting up to use the bathroom—but she
still couldn’t remember her name or what had happened. He prompted
her as much as he could, knowing head injuries could cause amnesia,
that memory could recur any time, triggered by anything.

“You found me in the snow?” she mused,
sipping the tea he’d made. It was good to see her sitting up,
although she didn’t do it for long and she still slept a great
deal. Her head hurt her and although the wound was healing nicely,
the bruises on her forehead were growing a deeper, angry purple by
the day. He had taken the zip-tie handcuffs off since she seemed
more lucid, but he didn’t go far, never out of sight of the
house.

“There was an accident,” he reminded
her.

“And you didn’t take me to the hospital
because…”

He nodded toward the window. The snow had
drifted against the pane, a good four feet high. He had to use
snowshoes everywhere now. He’d plowed out the driveway, but the
cabin wasn’t built near any real pavement or labeled roads, and the
way out couldn’t be called anything more than a path—room enough
for one vehicle in and out. It was ten miles by car to anything
resembling civilization.

“But how did I get all the way out here?”
she mused, rubbing her bandaged head. She repeated that action
often, as if her wound was a lamp and a genie might appear to tell
her the answers she sought.

“There were two men in the car.” He treaded
this road carefully. He didn’t know her relationship to his
brother. “Do you remember them?”

She shook her head, frowning into her tea.
“I remember snow. Shoveling snow. I remember a squirrel at our bird
feeder. I chased him away. We feed the cardinals and blue jays that
stay in the winter…”

“Who is ‘we’?” he prompted gently. This was
promising—more than she’d ever shared.

Again, she sighed, looking over at him with
a helpless shrug. “I don’t know.”

He stood and took her tray. She’d graduated
from soup to sandwiches and he was pleased to see she’d eaten
almost all of it.

“The men…they were dead?” she asked
again.

He nodded, waiting. She seemed to be
considering this information as if for the first time, although
they’d gone over it a dozen times at least.

“Will you call the police?” She put her tea
on the night table, pulling the covers up high. “Take me to a
hospital?”

“When the snow stops,” he agreed. He turned
to take the tray out and her voice halted him.

“Why won’t you take off the mask?”

Her words made him cringe. She’d asked him
this question before and he’d given his answer, trying to assuage
her fears, but he found it hard to address the issue repeatedly. It
was like piercing an old wound with an ice pick every few
hours.

“It’s for your own good.” He hesitated, hand
on the doorknob, balancing the tray. When he glanced back at her,
he saw the hurt in her eyes and wished things could be different.
“Trust me, you don’t want me to take it off.”

She usually argued with him, gave some sort
of protest, but this time she didn’t. Instead, she turned to look
out the window. Snow was falling again and the world was white.

He shut the door behind him and when he went
in later to check on her, she was sleeping, her tea cup empty,
covers twisted around her waist. He pulled them up to her chin and,
not for the first time, wondered what in the hell he was going to
do about her.

* * * *

She woke screaming again.

She couldn’t remember the dream, she just
knew it terrified her. Silas stumbled in, feeling his way to the
bed.

“Bad dream,” she whispered.

He sat on the edge. “Do you remember?”

“No.” It was hard to explain to someone how
you could be so afraid of something you couldn’t recall, but that
overwhelming sense of terror wouldn’t leave her limbs—they trembled
under the blankets.

“Are you cold? Do you want me to put more
wood in the stove?” He adjusted her covers in the darkness.

“No.” She shivered. He started to stand and
she grabbed his arm. “Please. Stay for a while?”

His weight made the little bed creak as he
sat. She didn’t let go, gripping the thick expanse of his forearm.
They stayed that way for a few moments, quiet, their breath the
only sound in the room.

“Would you talk to me?” she whispered,
swallowing past her fear.

He shifted on the bed. “What about?”

“Anything.” Her hand slid down, finding its
way into his.

Silas cleared his throat, squeezing her hand
gently, and she waited, her heart still trying to find a normal
beat. Just his presence helped, but the calming sound of his voice
was better.

“I saw a wolf today,” he said finally. “She
was really something.”

“You did?” She half-sat, already interested.
“How do you know it was a ‘she’?”

“Females are smaller than males,” he
explained. “I wish you could have seen her. I was out back getting
wood and I looked up and there she was, right at the top of the
hill.”

“Were you scared?”

“No.”

She smiled in the darkness. “Are you ever
scared, Silas?”

“Yeah,” he admitted softly. His other hand
moved over hers, petting her skin.

“Was she a gray wolf?”

“Black,” he corrected. “Beautiful. She
reminded me of you.”

She felt warm at his words. “What did you
do?”

“I just watched her.”

She tried to imagine it, face to face with
such a wild animal. She’d seen her fair share of deer and coyotes,
even a bobcat once, but never a wolf. “Aren’t you worried about her
coming back and attacking us?”

“No. My father always said, anyone who’s
afraid of the wolf shouldn’t live in the forest.”

She frowned, something flashing into
consciousness. It was brief, fleeting, a cross between déjà vu and
the sense that something was right at the tip of her tongue, if she
could just remember…

“You’re safe here,” Silas assured her.

“I’ve never been safe anywhere.” The feeling
was true even if there was no real memory to accompany it. She
struggled with trying to remember anything about her life, even her
own name. Again, it was that feeling, like it was all on the tip of
her tongue, if only she could speak. Silas had been patient,
prompting her often, but she could tell he was worried. She was
worried too, but the snow falling outside kept them from making a
much-needed hospital visit.

She turned toward the big man sitting on the
edge of her bed, wondering about him. He seemed to have as much of
a missing history as she did. He was quiet to the point of being
laconic, giving her lots of space and privacy, although she had
caught him checking in on her a lot in the past day or two. And the
mask thing was strange, but everything felt weird, off-kilter, and
he hadn’t given her any real reason not to trust him, after
all.