An animal roar sounded in his ears as huge hands closed about his throat, ripping him away from Cain. With a bellow of rage Eli Garvey flung him to the ground, those dull-beast eyes darkening with crazed rage as they fell upon the slashed countenance of his brother.
Garret tried to scramble backward, but fury made the bulky man swift, as dangerous as a wounded bear. He charged, jerking Garret high. With an inhuman scream Eli hurled him through the air.
Garret waited for the crushing blow of the earth striking him, waited for the bone-jarring impact. His arm struck a hard, stony rim, the bone snapping, but that hideous sensation was lost in a far more horrifying one as he plunged down into hellish emptiness, falling, falling.
His body slammed into something hard, the ledge halfway down the cliff’s face. Agony speared through him, the pain magnified by his mother's screaming and Beth's tormented cries.
They filled his head until he felt it would burst, until he thought he'd go mad.
His head exploded once, twice, with the sound of gunfire, and then there was only silence.
Chapter Nineteen
The demons were stalking him again.
Ashleen could feel them as if she were being torn by their red-hot pincers. For four days Garret had been at their mercy. For four days she had watched, helpless.
Hell.
Now she knew the full meaning of that dreaded word.
She shoved herself to a sitting position upon the feather mattress where she had kept her vigil, close enough to touch him, to hear his faintest moan, feel his slightest movement. Dashing the tumbled curls from sleep-rimmed eyes, she peered down for the millionth time at the man lying beside her.
Moonlight filtered in through the opening in the canvas, skating merciless fingers of silver across Garret's face, cleaving away the defenses he had so carefully erected around himself, paring down to the horrible scars he had kept hidden for twenty years.
Time and time again as Garret had drifted in and out of consciousness she had caught hoarse whispers, words born of delirium painting for her the most merciless of images.
She had thought Kennisaw Jones's horrific tale on the journey to West Port had revealed the full depth of what Garret had suffered the day his family had died. But awful as the old man's story had been, it couldn’t compare to the rasping of Garret's anguished voice—a whiskey-warm man's voice breaking with the terror, the grief, of the child he had been.
Ash smoothed her fingertips over his sweat-beaded brow, crooning to him as if he were Liam in the grips of some awful nightmare. But no such soothing would ever be able to drive away the hauntings so stark upon Garret's face, the fear, the guilt, the despair that this physical suffering had laid bare within him.
"N-no." His lips battled to form the plea. "Don't hurt..."
"I'm not going to let them hurt you, love." Ash pressed a kiss to his temple, her heart breaking. "I promise."
"Ma... Beth... they shot... shot Ma... shot them... all."
Ash huddled close, holding him, loving him so fiercely she would have given her life to spare him such pain. "It was a long time ago, sweeting. It's over now. Over."
"N-no... never over... never be over..."
A shudder worked through him, and he crushed her so hard against him she could feel the erratic hammering of his heart, feel the bindings she had wrapped around his injured ribs. He had held her thus a dozen times, as if she were his anchor in some secret storm. And she could only hope and pray that she had somehow helped him.
"Garret, I love you," she said against his hair. "I love you so much."
"Love... you..."
She felt him stiffen, draw back but a whisper. His lashes fluttered, opened, revealing eyes reddened with tears he had shed while lost in consuming blackness. Tears she would never allow him to know she had shared.
He stared at her long seconds then shook his head as if trying to clear it. A ragged sound tore from his throat. "Ash..."
Her name. Her eyes stung, that sound the sweetest she'd ever heard.
"Ash, h-hold me."
"Forever, if you want me to."
"Couldn't... help them... Ma... Beth..."
