Wicked Hunt (Dark Hearts Book 3) (9 page)

The stalk of a man’s boots crushed grit on concrete.

“Stop.”

The rapid, hard, and repetitive smack of fist to flesh sounded, ending with a louder thump and a satisfied grunt. Then Grimm was back levering out nails.

I tensed, expecting myself to scream. The hurt became distant and thin.

One gone.

Two.

The pain arched then ebbed, washing in and out, burning my hands until Grimm again carried it away with his touch. I shouldn’t want him when I was hurting. Shouldn’t.

What he’d done, insane.

My response, ditto.

There were bodies everywhere, lying everywhere on the floor. Bleeding ones, still ones, breathing ones. My torturers and a man I knew.

“Mavros.” I gaped. He was one of the breathing ones, sprawled face down. With the sticky tape still dangling from my lip, I staggered sideways then went to walk to him.

Grimm pulled me to a halt with a hand on the back of my neck.

“We’re leaving.” He stared intently into my eyes, swallowed as if distraught at what he saw, then he wiped away my tears with his thumb. “There are clothes on a line outside. A taxi waiting up an alley. Come.”

Naked, I stumbled after him. With his grip shifted to my forearm he guided me along.

“Where are we going?”

I could feel his cum leaking from me. Devastation had taken the first spot in the queue for my recovering brain. I was so adrift, I could only follow my depraved and possibly insane rescuer, but then he wasn’t just holding my arm.

A tendril of will connected us and my rage had gone on holidays.

The sun scorched my eyes and I waited, with a bloody forearm across my eyes. Grimm dragged clothes over me and did them up. Then he quickly wrapped my hands with something soft. Rags maybe. I blinked and looked. Yes.

“Come.”

He paid the taxi driver with a large wad of cash, silencing his protests. When I only stared back at the man, he turned to the steering wheel and drove us away.

Where were we going? I knew where we should go. Grimm was out of control. He’d knocked out Mavros and fucked me while I was nailed to a post. Whatever the mesmer bug was doing to him, it was getting worse.

Sensible me would shove open the door and roll out, run away fast.

And what about the real me? The me that chased after men with a hairpin because she hated what they did...what was that me going to do?

I frown-stared at Grimm, who’d sat next to me, parking himself like a lump. A solid lump. The seat upholstery was squashed down as if he was made of lead. I’d seen his muscles, knew he was bigger than before, but Mavros wasn’t a small or easily overcome man. He also wasn’t weird beastman crazy like Grimm.

He had his head in his hands, and his hands were clenched, the veins standing out as he worked his fingers in his face. Remorse? He’d come to his senses? I wasn’t courageous enough, yet, to disturb him. The event in the warehouse had wiped me out. My hands still trembled.

Remorse wasn’t enough to make me throw myself under a bus for a man.

Grimm wasn’t any man though.

He’d stood by me past the limits of anyone I knew. If the bug was eating his brain, I was going to do my craptastic best to figure out a cure.

Grimm had stood back to back with me fending off the bad, bad world. Now all I had to do was be there for him. There was a vaccine, maybe. A research scientist in Thailand, maybe.

Fantasies weren’t cures, but maybe I could make this fantasy into a needle full of the right stuff and have a once upon a time fairytale ending.

Except, if he wasn’t a mesmer, he couldn’t arouse me. It seemed a petty dispute, considering.

It was too much to decide when the cure was hypothetical.

The taxi driver started asking questions and, from the sweat rolling down his temples having a bleeding woman and a madman in the back wasn’t making him happy.

Grimm said nothing.

I leaned forward and reeled off the address that might lead to the man with some answers.

Grimm

The disaster that’d just happened ran around and around in my brain.

What. The. Fuck.

It was wrong.

But I would do it again. I could feel the itch, the compulsion, just thinking about what I’d seen when I stepped into that warehouse.

Her, tied there naked, nailed there, with those three bastards leering at her.

The taxi seat shook as we went over potholes and turned corners.

I had no clue where Zorie had directed the driver.

I had no clue why she was still with me.

Except...if she tried running, I’d haul her back.

I’d followed her kidnappers easily because I was tied to her soul or something. I knew her. Where she was. What she felt, mostly. Just not her exact thoughts.

She was mine.

I knew her fear, her anxiety, her determination. She’d made some decision back there before she’d spoken to the driver.

Fuck Mavros. Telling me what to do with Zorie. Fuck him. The satisfaction from laying him out had been immense. I stared at my fist and the abrasions. He’d be so pissed.

Morally, he was right. Fucking Zorie while she was nailed to a post had been insane.

I didn’t care.

Time to remember who I was.

“Show me your hands.”

Grimacing she moved her arms closer. The torn cloths I’d wrapped over her palms were stained with blood but not too much. Nail holes were smaller even if they looked ferocious. Levering them out without crushing her hands had been a delicate task.

“How do they feel?” Gently I cupped my hands beneath hers.

“Better, when you hold them.” Zorie nodded. “You know you’re not functioning on all cylinders right now, Grimm?”

“I know.” I looked up. “You’re not running.”

Her mouth twisted. “No. I’m not a coward. You...who you are when you’re normal, mean a lot to me.” Around her eyes wrinkled as she seemed to think. I could feel the agitation.

“What?”

“I’m going back to the man I last visited. You know?” She ducked her head and studied me.

The man she’d almost murdered. “Yes. Why?”

“He knows something. I think it might be a way to help you. If you keep going the way you are, what do you think will happen?”

“Fucked if I know.” I turned her hands over. “I think the nails missed bone.”

“Yeah. God, you’re like Panadol and heroin all mixed into one.” Tears welled in her eyes.

“I’m glad.” I drew in a breath through my nose then exhaled. “I’m glad I can do this for you. I’m no doctor but maybe you need a tetanus shot? Antibiotics?”

“Mm-hmm.” She nibbled on her bottom lip in that cute way. “We need to cure you. This man might have a way.”

What the hell? “You’re joking?”

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “You...” She glanced at the driver. “You are not normal anymore, and you’re getting worse.”

“Normal? No mesmer is normal.” I nearly growled that last part. “Crap.” I sat back, rocking the seat, even the car seemed to rock. “We can talk to him. Not promising anything.”

The sight of her sitting opposite me – straight, slender and feminine, no-nonsense attitude, and challenging me to get cured. Blood soaked her hands and she’d been recently abducted and almost made dead. She was the most kick-ass chick I’d ever known.

The tide growled and sluiced about in my head, rising, dark and forthright and mean.

“I’m never letting you go. We can talk but that’s it.”

The taxi rumbled onward. The tide lowered in my head, exposing the skeletons of my thoughts.

Sunlight flickered over her face. Scared still, but not daunted. My Zorie. Damn, I loved her.

“Okay. We will talk. Then see. Discuss.” Pain distorted her mouth.

I reached over and took her hands again. “Good.” When the pain was down to almost nothing, I took her jaw in my hand and I kissed her until I had her wanting me and clutching at my back with those wounded hands.

“See what I mean?”

“Fuck.” She panted, glazed of eye. “You. Grimm Heller.”

Oh yeah.
I smiled.

Zorie

The taxi jerked and creaked to a stop outside the gate to Nicholas’s house. If I’d done what Mavros had and grabbed his number the last time we met, this could’ve been done at a distance. Though really, I preferred to see the man’s eyes. What I was planning had so many holes in it.

What if that scientist in Thailand was dead or full of shit? He might have nothing left of his research. He might say no. Nicholas might have been lying all along.

This plan was the only one I could think of. Rocking up to some government official, an embassy, saying, ‘Hi there, can you help us get rid of this small problem we have with this weird bug?’ Eh. Not likely to yield any better results. I’d be imprisoned at the least.

So here we were. The ground had lost its steadiness since I last touched it with my feet. Grimm had my sandals, though, and had brought the remains of my handbag and its contents.

“In.” He urged me through the gate and up to the door.

Knocking was my job, apparently. After only half a minute, Nicholas opened the door for us. This time he was prepared and had his gun up and in our faces.

“Put that down or I will –” Grimm began.

“Shhh.” I waved down the gun. “Please? We need your help.”

He’d seemed a reasonable and somewhat moral sort, but in that instant, I was desperate. Would he let us in?

“What sort of help?” He frowned and peered past us, trying to see if anyone was behind Grimm, I guess. “What weapons do you have?”

“Knife, in my handbag. Grimm has a pistol.” I’d seen the Glock under his shirt. Holstered but no doubt he’d used it to shoot at least one of my captors.

“Put them both down. There.” He indicated the floor beside the door jamb.

There wasn’t much choice. I laid the handbag at my feet then stood.

“Not mine.” Grimm glowered. “You hurt her and bad things will happen to you.”

“Then we have a standoff. You’re not coming in with a gun.”

Shit.
I unfolded my palms before Nicholas. To my annoyance, they shook. “Look, I’m wounded. I need to find out if that research project is real.”

He glanced from me to Grimm then back again.

Grimm leaned his broad back against the house and grinned maliciously. I wanted to smack him. This guy, Nicholas, was my only avenue.

“You look terrible. You have bruises on your neck and face.” Nicholas touched his own face, gently, as if he was empathizing severely. “It is true though – the research.”

I took a breath and rattled off my thoughts. “Then I need to see that doctor you mentioned. The man who was in charge. Grimm is like you but the mesmer bug is getting out of control. I want to ask if that vaccine works...if it can still work.”

“Jesus H. ... Ummm. Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “I can text him. See if he will meet you. How did you get wounded? Are you in trouble with the law here?”

“Maybe.” Grimm folded his arms. “If it bothers you, we can go. I’m only doing this to make her happy.”

Man.
I glared. Past the throb of my hands, I could still feel the throb where he’d fucked me, feel the stickiness residue on my thighs. It set me back until I remembered the Grimm he had once been. I said, quietly, “You aren’t normal.”

“Neither are you.”

I played a card that seemed likely to work, If not, I’d run out of reasons. Even standing up was taxing me. Nicholas was right – everywhere was bruised. “If you keep going how you are, I think you will hurt me badly. Do you want that?”

The movement of his Adam’s apple and the crinkling around his eyes and on his forehead gave me hope. The man did care.

“Okay. Okay.” He shifted on his feet. “Find out. If he’s real, we go to him ask a fuckload of questions, then we decide whether to go ahead with this.”

“Sure.” I turned back to Nicholas. Past him, I saw his partner flit into view then duck away. Hiding – I didn’t blame her. Grimm was behaving like a troll from under a bridge.

“Then you come in. He can wait.”

I walked in, noting that Grimm propped open the door with his foot and kept it there. A bronze statue of a many-armed goddess, on a tall table in the hallway, almost fell when my knees went wobbly and I bumped it. My fast rescue left blood smearing the metal. I scrubbed it with some cloth from my dress then followed Nicholas.

“Sit there. Wait.” Nicholas had drawn me into his living room.

I sat on a cane lounge that rocked under me. Pulling out a phone as he walked, Nicholas went into another room.

The tones of button presses continued for some time. Perhaps ten minutes later he returned with the screen glowing and he handed the mobile phone to me.

“He wants to talk to you. Said you’d want more info on him. So...talk.”

I raised the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“Hi there. Call me Doctor Rudy. I was in charge of the research project I believe you’ve been told about.”

His voice sounded reasoned, sane, almost clinical in the way he then ran off some facts about standard deviations in the research data and what they’d done to various subjects and how long this and that had taken. One fact caught me and made me freeze.

“What?”

“The symptoms that Nicholas told me about. The ones your man has. We had a similar subject, coded 31. Subject’s name was Wolfe, I recall. He died. Went insane first. Increased muscle mass. Tremors. Loss of ability to fully interact with and understand what was happening to him at times. Then loss of language ability. Rudy said some of those were visible in this friend of yours, Grimm. In ours we also saw other signs. Rage. Extreme sexual hyperactivity, even more so than many mesmers.”

I gulped, massaged my temples. “Yes. I’ve seen that.”

“You may not have a lot of time. If we can get him here fast...I have kept a sample of the drug that could help. Cryopreserved. But I don’t have a vaccine, and this isn’t going to be cheap to kickstart again.”

No vaccine.
Shit.
It had been a long time though. It would’ve been like thawing out a mammoth from an iceberg and having it walk away.

“You want money. Okay. That is a long time to preserve anything.”

“More that I need money. I have connections here so I can get some things done others would find prohibitive but it will still cost. I think is this worth trying.”

He did.
Huh.
My suspicious nature arose.

“Why not on this Wolfe then. Or did you try?”

“He was too fast. Changed too rapidly. It slowed things down only. Your guy sounds less far along.”

Right. “I think I can get funds, once I’m in Thailand and I establish my ID with the embassy.”

“Good.”

“I should tell Grimm all this.” Should, but there was no assurance this would work.

“I suggest minimal details only. He may lose his capability of seeing logic. Nicholas said you might have some legal problems.”

“Yes,” I whispered. My hands were hurting badly again and I almost dropped the phone from my bandaged hand. “We might.” Fucking tears started to flow. I swiped them away. How were we going to get out of India? “I’m not sure...” I began thickly. “If we can –”

“Shhh. I can hear you’re upset. I’ve always felt remorse over this project. It was an evil thing to do to men. I have contacts and I will help you. One man can get you out of India. He smuggles. It won’t be easy, but I think I can do this.”

“Thank you.”

“One more thing. Wolfe was impossible to handle toward the end. He killed. You need to be very careful around your friend. Stay with Nicholas. I’ll get back to you, very soon.”

The phone disconnected. For a second I crushed my hand into the case until the pain became too much. Then I pressed
end
and dabbed my eyes with the back of the bandage.

Grimm might kill? I’d seen him kill. Seen what he did to Cherie. Even though I wasn’t her, I imagined him doing that to me.

“I won’t abandon him,” I whispered. If I did, I’d never forgive myself.

Grimm had stood by me and found a solution to Reuben when everyone else had done nothing, and that included Mavros.

Waiting took forever. I was aiming to drag Grimm to another third world country on the remote chance a man I didn’t know at all could cure him. Grimm didn’t even want to go. Rudy
had
sounded genuine. From my meager laboratory experience, as a lecturer in biology, he seemed to have the scientific knowledge at his fingertips. Whether that meant he could cure and not hurt...that I couldn’t tell.

After almost an hour, Nicholas came out to the verandah where Grimm and I sat, and he nodded. “It’s on. Someone will take you to the airport and they can get you to Thailand. Good luck.”

He held out his hand and I gingerly levered myself to my feet and went to shake only to stop and smile weakly at the bandage across my palm.

“Oh! Sorry.”

Grimm didn’t bother shaking. His glare was mean enough to blister the air and Nicholas stepped back a little.

“I was told ten minutes tops. Then you can both go. I hope you get what you need.”

The door closed behind him.

Soon after, a vehicle pulled up somewhere past the white-painted brick fence.

“This is it. Coming?”

He grunted. “Let’s go.”

He hadn’t touched me since we arrived. It made me wonder why.