Situating her in such a way so that her arms were dangling over the sides of the tub and effectively holding her body upright, I dumped out the bag of soap and grabbed the first misshapen lump I saw. Unwrapping it, I turned back to her, surveying the mess and wondering where the hell to even begin.
After several seconds of procrastinating, I started washing her, first her arms, then her chest and torso. By the time I reached her legs, I was on my fourth bar of soap, and the water she was soaking in was nearly black.
“Fucking hell,” I mumbled. “I need more water.” It took me nearly half an hour to get her out of the tub, then dump the water outside, refill it, and once again situate her inside it.
Once or twice during the process, she’d cracked open her eyes. Glazed over and unfocused, she’d blinked sluggishly up at me before closing them again. Other times, she made small noises of distress or painful grunts, but for the most part she was oblivious and never once tried to stop me from cleaning her.
And I kept cleaning her, cleaning her and cursing her, until I began to see skin beneath all that grime. Finally I could make out how pale she was, her skin nearly snow white, as if she hadn’t seen sunlight in years. After moving her matted hair away from her face, I scrubbed the remaining sliver of soap across her cheeks, revealing her features inch by inch. The more I cleaned, the more of her that was revealed, the slower my movements became. When her skin was virtually spotless, I rocked back on my heels and stared.
She was young, ridiculously so, with smooth skin and small, delicate features. Her eyes were wide, her nose small and pert, and those lips, they were full and pouty, the kind men dream about. But her body wasn’t in any way childlike—her breasts were high and firm handfuls, and her small frame not without curves. The girl’s extraordinarily youthful look couldn’t be ignored.
Something burned low in my gut, a feeling that both sickened and panicked me. She looked ... she seemed ... so fucking innocent. The men here, once they got a look at her, would line up for her. And Liv—that goddamn lunatic—would be elated once she saw her. Murderer or not, the girl was pussy, innocent pussy.
I ran a hand over my hair.Jesus Christ, is she a virgin?
They’d fuck her and then they’d kill her for what she’d done. And if they didn’t kill her, they’d damn sure make her wish they had.
Still feeling sick, I set back to work washing the tangled, matted mass of her hair the best I could. When I’d finished, I carried her naked into my bedroom and laid her out on my mattress. Sifting through a pile of clothing, I pulled free the cleanest items I could find—a relatively clean T-shirt and not-so-clean pair of boxers.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I said, dragging them up her legs.
Again I tried to get her to swallow some water, this time managing to get nearly half a bottle down her throat. I’d just covered her up with my blankets and was glaring down at her, debating what to do next, when a knock on my door interrupted my thoughts.
I waited several minutes, hoping whoever it was would just go away, but the knocking only became more insistent and downright obnoxious, until it was literally a flurry of pounding fists.
Folding my arms across my chest, I sighed angrily.
Liv was here.
Chapter Eight
Autumn
I awoke to the sound of howling. A shrill, horrible sound that made my head hurt even more than it already did. I wondered for a moment if it was a bird. Had a biter gotten to it? What else would make it scream so horribly?
The howling continued, the awful noise causing the tiny hairs on my body to stand on end. I tried to sit up and immediately stilled as pain radiated through my body. The room spun around me and continued spinning until I felt submerged beneath water, drowning against the tide that was rapidly sucking the breath from my lungs. I fought it, fought the feeling with everything I had, but my meager strength was no match. I wasn’t strong enough. I would never be strong enough.
“Leave!”
The angry roar penetrated my haze. Was it Eagle, the man who’d saved me, the terrifying man that I still wasn’t entirely sure was real. Was anything real? Everything seemed numb and spongy to the touch, even the air around me.
“You’ll be sorry!” a feminine voice shrieked.
That howl and this voice, they were one and the same. But birds couldn’t talk, or could they? An image of a bird with brown feathers and a long orange beak came to mind, a dirty, ugly thing that flew around the biters, circling them, teasing the monsters.
“You’ll come back begging! And I’ll turn you away!”
The man laughed, a deep rumbling laugh that was meant to mock the bird that howled at him. The bird howled again, shrieking and screeching. I imagined her flailing, sending feathers in every direction.
“You’re going to regret this, Adler! I’m going to make you—”
The rest of the bird’s screams were cut off by a loud slam of metal against metal. Heavy footfalls echoed around me and I trembled, wishing I could disappear into the softness I was lying upon.
“You’re awake.”
My eyes popped open and met with a pair of the blackest eyes I’d ever seen. My father had always said you could tell a lot about someone when you looked in their eyes. And these eyes were full of death.
“Thirsty?” the eyes asked.
