Nightfall (36 page)

A monster sped from the undergrowth and knocked him behind the knees. The brunt of its slight weight seemed aimed at unbalancing him, not taking him down directly. Feeling sluggish, his chest burning like skin under a tattoo needle, Mason spun. Another repeated the hard knock against the back of his knees. He stumbled. The ax flew from his hands.

When he looked up, he swore. He called himself every foul name he could think of. A ring of the last monsters closed in like a noose. The ax lay useless ten feet away. And Mason's own blood froze on the snow.

The beast-man kicked between a pair of his lackeys and entered the circle. He cracked the knuckles of each hand, then squatted and opened his arms. A direct challenge. Mason could almost imagine that long-ago bar fight, with the hairy, naked, fetid man in front of him standing in for just another sloppy drunk. The curs were his cronies, waiting to finish the job.

So this is it?
He'd do barehand, one-on-one combat with a half-animal thing, with the best option being that if he lived long enough, he'd get to ward off another eight beasts.

Mason pushed to his feet and shrugged out of his ruined camo jacket. The air stripped his body heat. Blood chilled across his pectorals. But he'd do this thing.

In the back of his mind, he heard Jenna. She was waking. She was upset and frantic, but thoughts of her filled him with warmth. Whatever had happened to her between the tunnel and the station, she was safe now. The others would patch her up. Instead of saying good-bye to her, he closed the door that linked their souls. He didn't want her to see this, to feel it. And he didn't want her to come out after him.

Something of their love would live on if she did.

But in the quiet of his head, he whispered.
Good-bye, my love.

“Cold,” the thing said again.

Then it threw back his head and howled. The rest chimed in with a collected wail that raised the hair on Mason's arms.

“Yeah, well, I'm cold too, you fucker. Let's go.”

The beast-man snapped. He lunged forward, the weight of his body shifting to the right. Mason ducked left and added a shove. The monster fell, sliding against the snow. He grunted and cried out. When the circle of drooling monsters moved to take Mason down, he rose up on all fours and snarled as if to say,
My fight
.

Mason strode forward and kicked. The man grunted and curled into a ball.

“Those are your kidneys.” Mason kicked again. “That's your sternum.” And again. “And that's your mandible. You remember that? Huh? Language. Anatomy. Maybe you never knew it, but once you had the ability to learn it.”

The man spat blood onto the snow. A tooth followed. He growled, “Hungry.”

The single-mindedness of his opponent had the power to make Mason shiver. They wouldn't ever stop. They wouldn't relent, because they didn't think about the odds or the fear. Even if half-men monstrosities like this guy managed to come up with a few strategies, they wouldn't ever aspire for more than food and shelter and spreading their corruption.

“That's the difference,” Mason said, as much to himself as to his opponent. He felt the dogs growing restless, their frantic energy held in check as if they wore leashes. Only their leader's command held them at bay. “But you won't win this thing—even if I die here.”

He dropped the weight of his knee against the man's chest, which collapsed in a sick crack. Unnatural claws scraped at his forearms, but Mason pushed past the weakening defenses. He looped his numb hands around its neck, trusting what he saw rather than what he felt. A quick twist and the life snapped out.

Mason looked to the sky and breathed in. Then the mob hit him from the front, behind, everywhere at once, and his mouth tasted of blood.

Her wounds weren't as bad as they'd seemed, just a dozen slices coupled with exhaustion and cold. Chris had patched up the damage, with quick dressings wrapped up tight. Some soup and hot tea went a long way to making her feel better. She'd thanked Chris and Tru until her voice all but gave out. Now Jenna was dressed and back on her feet. Only residual weakness and a few sharp twinges marked her ordeal.

Except it wasn't over—and it wouldn't be until he came home.

Funny that she could feel this way about the man who'd stuffed her in the trunk of her own car, one who came bearing stories of Armageddon. She paced upstairs, watching the snow. Dead trees, dead white. Apart from the rays of dying sunlight, it was a black-and-white world.

Fear owned her. A dark part wondered if it was because he hadn't wanted her to experience his death. She didn't know what that would do to her, feeling her mate's life end. Nothing good. Jenna touched her brow to the window, watching the sun go down. Soon there wouldn't be anything out there to see.

She heard someone coming down the hall. Turning, she fixed her features into a semblance of welcome. Tru slid in first, followed by Chris and Penny. It no longer surprised her to see Chris holding the little girl, who gazed at Jenna with sad blue eyes. They all wanted news. Amazing, actually, that they'd managed to hold off this long.

They'd told her about Ange. But Jenna hadn't wept. Not yet. Maybe the tears would come in time.

“He did it,” Tru said then. “Nothing will come up through the tunnels. And the water's still flowing up from that underground spring. We're good.”

Chris nodded tightly. “He's right. The generators are still going strong. Jenna, you sure you're strong enough to be walking around?”

“People don't get better in beds. They get better by testing their limits.” She couldn't believe she'd just quoted Mitch. One day, she'd write down all his truisms.
The Dark Age According to Barclay
. He'd been a huge proponent of walking off injuries, and when that failed, rubbing dirt on them. “I'm not using up our stores, not if I don't have to. And I
can't
rest.”

“Understandable.” Chris put his hand on her shoulder and her muscles coiled. She leashed the impulse to snap at him. It wasn't smart to handle a wounded wolf whose mate had gone missing. Jenna didn't know what he'd seen in her face, but he took a slow step back.

“Hey, Chris,” Tru said. “Maybe you and Penny should go ... uh, do some stuff.”

Jenna didn't apologize as Chris left with Penny. Between John's absence and Ange's death, everything was wrong. A glance out the window showed her that the sun had gone—along with most of her hope. The sky shone like a bruise, twilight fading to mourning purple.

Tru sat on a table, knees splayed. “He'll be okay. Right?” The slight pause before the kid tagged on the question didn't fool Jenna. He needed a positive answer more than the truth.

“If anybody can fight through and make it back, he can. I did what I could to draw them off.” She didn't mention the alpha or the cold, or how injuries weakened a body. Likely he knew that as well as she did.

Jenna curled her hands into fists, wanting so badly to run out and look for him. A silent scream built in her throat. Thankfully, for all his general acuity, Tru trusted her. He could feel better for a little while at least.

He smiled. “Yeah, you had an assload of them on you.”

“Thanks again. I owe you big-time.” She wasn't exaggerating to make him feel better. “I hope I didn't bleed on you too much.”

Tru shrugged. “It's weirder to find you in the snow naked.”

With a wince, Jenna conceded the point. “So, what do you think? Do I need to keep a cache by the front door, maybe hide some clothes in the woods?”

“It'll be easier, come spring.”

Those words loosened a stone in her chest. Tru believed they were going to make it. He thought there would be a spring, and a summer, and another fall—time enough for them to perfect the new rituals and skills that would permit their survival. He believed they would build, like Mason had said was her gift. Jenna considered that possibility. They needed a proper place to live, something designed for a simpler time, with ventilation and different cooking facilities ...

Just for a second, she let herself believe too.

Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back and found a smile. “I hope so. Would it be okay if I hugged you?”

He hunched his shoulders. “I'm not much for that stuff. But if it would make
you
feel better ...”

“It would.”

Looking uneasy, the kid stepped forward, and Jenna wrapped her arms around him. He felt more fragile than he was, all bones and bad attitude. But beneath that beat an incredibly strong heart. She couldn't believe he'd charged out into that mob, all by himself, to save her ass. He hadn't broken. Hadn't run, even when it would make sense in a man twice his age.

He patted her on the back as if he didn't know what to do with his hands. “You good?”

She nodded. “Look, I'm going to get some blankets and camp out up here. From this side, you can see the front door.”

“Watching for him,” Tru said.

“Yeah. You want to sit with me?”

“I don't need to hang out in the basement anymore. So I could.”

Maybe he saw some of that in her expression, the need coursing through her. He gave a terse nod. “You stay here. I'll get the supplies.”

Jenna turned back to the windows and willed John to break from the trees, to come stumbling across the white expanse of churned snow. He didn't.

Tru kept watch with her until late in the evening. They didn't talk. He fell asleep sometime after midnight, though he might be embarrassed as hell about reaching his limit. In the early morning, Chris came to the doorway and stood there for a minute.

Jenna turned lazily, her head feeling muddy and clouded. “Need something?”

“You should go to bed.”

“Would you? If it were someone you loved?”

Chris looked at his hands. “You want some tea?”

It was the kind of offer Ange would have made. By his awful expression, he knew it. Jenna's heart twisted. But she didn't go to him.

“Sure.” It would help keep her awake. By way of privation, her hard-core sugar and caffeine addiction had been kicked, so even a little bit wired her up these days.

“Feels good just to do something,” Chris said as he brought the drink.

Failure weighed on him even to her distracted eyes. Maybe he felt like he should have done more. Saved the day, somehow, with no losses. That wasn't logical, but something had changed him. Whether it was the fight or the loss, Jenna couldn't know. Chris's fire had gone out, no longer questing after answers in the same way. He wasn't the same man they'd heard talking into a radio without any hope he'd be heard.

She didn't speak any of her thoughts. No sense in it when he had enough to contend with. Jenna lifted the mug for a long drink.

Instinct made her turn. Pain and exhaustion vanished, as if a door had been opened in her heart.

She thrust the cup at Chris and sprinted for the windows. There he was, shambling toward the station. He fell twice while she watched, afraid desperation made her delusional. But no. He got up with a dogged determination that could belong to nobody else, not even a figment of her imagination.

“Tru! Up now! You're not done yet, soldier.”

“Wha—?”

“We have one more to bring home.”

He snapped to with a speed that saddened her even as she blessed it. Matching Jenna's movements, Tru shrugged into his jacket and laid hands on his rifle. “He's back?”

“Chris,” Jenna said on her way out. “Bring the blankets. We're going to get him.”

“Right behind you.”

Jenna sped downstairs at a dead run with Tru hot on her heels. “My arm's still a little weak,” she told Tru. Though she healed much faster than before, she didn't recover overnight. But most of her wounds already looked four days old. “So I need you on his left.”

Tru nodded. “Got it.”

He unfastened the locks with a speed born of practice. Jenna burst out of the station, stumbling over the tossed and refrozen snow. It hadn't been obvious from upstairs, but John had lost his pack. No weapons, no ammo. Not even the ax. Hell, half of his clothes were gone. He was covered in blood from head to toe, as if he had been rolling in guts. The foul grime had frozen to his skin, leaving her to guess at how badly he was hurt.

His eyes were fogged, unfocused. When Jenna and Tru ran up, he settled into a fighting stance, despite his struggle to stay standing. Finding him didn't relieve her mind. She fought its frantic surge. They couldn't afford to fight him just to get him safe.

“Stand down,” she ordered.

A shudder rolled through him, as if he recognized the authoritative tone. He let them take hold, one on either side. They dragged him back to the station. His weight tugged against Jenna's shoulders. Tru grunted, his breath coming in sharp puffs. Inside, while the kid did up the locks, Chris wrapped John in blankets and helped transport him downstairs.

The next few hours crawled past in an endless nightmare. Jenna's hands shook too much to be of any help to Chris while he cleaned and stitched. One gash showed the pale glint of bone. Jesus. So much raw flesh. So much damage. Too much, even for a man like John.