It was the lips that troubled him. Holding her by the back of her hair, he wiped his bloody hand on her shirt.
“Did she bite that ghoul guard, Tom?”
“Yes, sir. ’Fraid so. He’s a mess. A dead mess with his throat gnawed. Dead is good, so I don’t care.”
“Uh-huh.” He frowned. He did care. This was wrong. Surely the Lure didn’t do this, make you rip out throats with your teeth?
Fuck.
There were bits of flesh stuck to her shirt.
Mouth askew at the gore on this beautiful female, Rutger straightened. “If that waterfall bath of yours is good for cleaning a whole woman, I’m taking her there.” Tom nodded. “You can come too.”And chaperone me, was his distant, back-of-the-head thought. “She’s got blood and guts all over her. Tell Vargr where we are if he comes back!”
“Will do!” someone yelled.
He hoisted her onto his shoulder again.
“It’s safe there.” Tom said, ambling after him. “There’s a whole wall come down to one side.”
They climbed through the most leftward wall hole where the train had emancipated its back half, and he saw what Tom had indicated—a wall of rubble had been deposited over the cars stuck here. Half of most were buried to the right. Getting through to the rest of the motorway would take digging. Which meant the ghoul squad couldn’t get to them without hitting the camp first. The building structure looked generally sound. Still, he blessed the columns they passed with a once-over.
No visible cracks in these, but he was no engineer. Before it had gone over the edge, the front of the train had gouged a path through cars, the roadway, and more.
The waterfall was dead ahead, past the last crushed vehicles. One of those was a semi with a voluptuous chick painted on the driver’s side door. A baseball cap on the dash rested on a skull that was thoroughly stripped of flesh.
“Rats been here,” Tom said, gesturing at the semi with his rifle.
“Yeah, they get everywhere.”
Right at the edge, there’d been an office for the Trainway and Motorway. The dented sign hung at an angle. The office wall had been demolished by the impact of the train. A big chunk of the outer building wall was gone.
He peered at the world outside, smelled the fresh moisture in the air. The rain was roaring down, drumming past, making the waterfall a proper cascade.
Dusk had come and the light faded. The Lure should be lessening.
Beyond the streaked curtain of rain lurked an opposing building. A nice big chasm separated them from it. If the waterfall was a constant, it’d erode away enough that this part of the scraper would collapse. Such was the nature of the world. All things came to an end.
But not him, not yet.
Not her either.
He lowered Cyn until her boots touched the smashed floor.
The falling water curled and splashed into the office space because of a fracture of the façade, pooling on the floor to the depth of her calves. A big square desk perched in the pool like a wading bird. Staplers lay underwater along with paperclips and pens. Pieces of bright plastic swirled in the flow. A lip of concrete at the original doorway was trapping much of the water.
“Ummm, sir. Do we need to strip her?”
He eyed Tom, feeling as if he were an intruder, wanting him gone. “Hell, no. Just her boots.”
Though they were already wet.
Painstakingly, careful not to get brained by a wild kick, he and Tom drew off her boots, then decided that after all, her jeans may as well be saved from the water too.
They sat her on the desk to perform that delicate operation. Unzip. Roll them under her butt, tug, roll, tug some more. At least her arms were pinned back.
Taking the jeans off gave him such a damn hard-on, and Tom too.
“At least one of us can wait outside while I wash her. And it won’t be me.” If his words sounded harsh, like he might punch Tom if he stayed, so be it.
