The General's Daughter (Snow and Ash #1) (9 page)

“Fuck, oh Ilsa, fuck!” He comes, his body bowed over mine and a vicious snarl on his face. It’s like he’s claiming ownership. Like he’s telling me he’s master and I am slave.

It’s the most beautiful moment of my life.

“Thank you,” I whisper finally.

He frenches me lazily for a few minutes, and we sink back into unconsciousness.

#

Long-Haired Guy is cleaning his weapon for the umpteenth time, further evidence that the guys are getting antsy. We all are. Cooped up in this derelict structure for so long with nothing to do is dangerous. Being cooped up with four potential executioners has my stomach dissolving itself in its own acid. Can I trust what Talon said last night? Will he really protect me, or was he just trying to placate me?

When Talon and I emerged this morning, I felt like such a whore. Interestingly enough, none of the men have given me so much as a cross-eyed look, despite all the noise I made last night. All night. Maybe it was the look on Talon’s face, the one that said
don’t fuck with me
. Seriously, he has a way about him that scares people. It’s probably something you learn early on when your dad cooks meth, then master when you join him in the family business. You have to be a hard son of a bitch to pull off that lifestyle.

“Come on,” Talon says, holding out his hand. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Reluctantly, I let him lead me away from the others. I still have three more days. Don’t I? He’s not going to shoot me now, right? After yesterday?

We climb down the rotten steps into the freshly fallen snow, and Talon keeps my hand in his. But he’s not looking at me. His face is troubled. He’s thinking about something, but I don’t know what and I’m scared to ask.

Shit. Who am I kidding? Last night meant nothing. Not to him, anyway. Guys’ll stick their dick into anything with two legs and a pussy. Still, I allow him to lead me toward the wilderness, because there’s really nothing else I can do. A gang rape awaits me back at the trailer. Cannibals on the hunt lurk everywhere else. There’s a hard pit in my stomach weighing me down.

“Where are we going?” I ask when I can no longer take the silence.

He works his mouth into a frown, like he’s really not sure where he’s taking me or why. “You used to walk every day,” he says finally, “back in Bluefield. I thought you might like one, after…”

His voice drifts off.

After what? A night of raw sex? Or after hearing I only have a few days left to live? I could fire back a bitchy reply. One puckers at the tip of my tongue. But I don’t want my last days to be ugly.

“You were watching me for a while, then?” I ask.

He tilts his head, admitting it. “A week or so.”

“Dad’s security isn’t as good as he thinks, I guess.”

He shakes his head. He seems shy. At a loss for words or something. This can’t be right, though, because Talon is fearless.

“That one guard of yours, he ran off the night before we took you.”

“Sgt. Morey? I know.”

“They told you?”

“I gave Erin some boots and things.” I bite my lip. “Probably didn’t do her any good. The two of them are on their own out there.”

He darts me a surprised look. “You helped them!”

“Of course I didn’t.” I smile without humor. “If I did that, Dad would take his belt to me. Let’s just say I cast off some clothes I didn’t want anymore, and she happened to fit into them.”

“That was really kind of you.”

I give a short laugh. “Yeah, well, Erin was pregnant. They got it in their heads that Bluefield was a bad place to have a baby. I couldn’t talk her out of it.”

He shakes his head at that. “You have it better there than anywhere I’ve heard of.”

“Sad but true. They think there’s this place called Tintagel where everybody’s safe, there’s electricity, and there’s a job for everyone.” I arch my brows and give him my
yeah, right
look.

His hand tightens around mine as we pass the first of the trees. We go another thirty feet or so, and my heart lifts just a little. I may have said it before, but it’ll never be enough. I love trees. I think in another life I must have been a druid. Or maybe I was a tree.

“Ilsa.” Talon’s voice is quiet. Solemn.

My heart jolts to life, and my breaths come shallow. I stop and turn to him. “I don’t know what to say. I’m scared.”

He scoops me up and carries me over the remains of that tree he felled and sets me down on the old rotten log. He jams his hands in his pockets and cocks his hip against a nearby tree.

“There’s some serious bad shit between us.”

“No kidding.” I bury my forehead in my hands.

“Last night…” He pauses, and finally I look up again. “I shouldn’t have touched you. Shit’s too complicated for that.”

I half-laugh. “At least I felt alive, for a while anyway.”

His face wrinkles in confusion. “You aren’t who I thought you were,” he admits.

 
“Look at me,” I say when he turns away. I wait until he complies. “Unless you all kill me, and I figure you will, I have no place to go except back to Bluefield Mountain. I was a prisoner there, Talon. A well-fed, warmly clothed, coddled prisoner, and I hated every living moment of my life. He controlled everything about me, Talon, everything. I can’t go back to that.”

He swears.

My face scrunches as I pull every string in me to keep the tears from falling. “I’d rather live in that disgusting trailer and eat thirty-year-old peanut butter than go back.”

“Just…don’t go back. There are other communities.”

I scoff. “Those places don’t let in new people, and when they find out who my dad is, they’ll do the same thing General Barry is doing now.”

He looks away, but not before I see the agreement in his eyes.

“If I go back there, I’m going to be exactly the girl you thought I was. I think if I go back, I’ll lose whatever’s left of my soul.”

“He’ll take care of you. He loves you, Ilsa. He’s your dad.”

He just didn’t get it. “Just because I’m his daughter doesn’t mean he goes easy on me. Last time I openly defied him, he whipped me until I passed out. If I even look like I’m talking to a guy, he has the guy killed. I’m never alone, and his spies report everything to him.”

His eyes blaze.

I swallow and look away. I really wish I’d see a squirrel, or a bird, or…anything. “Last night I didn’t have to be the general’s daughter. If I’m going to die… If I’m going to die, at least I had that.” More than anything, I’m sad about the death of all my hopes.

The sound of automatic weapon fire ends the conversation.

“Down! Get down!” Talon doesn’t wait. He drags me behind the log.

“What is it? What’s happening?” I try to peer over, but Talon just shoves me down again.

“Stay here.” Talon sidesteps toward the clearing in a half crouch.

Stay put? Is he kidding? I follow him to a copse of pine trees whose needles have long since fallen. Still, it’s the best cover there is. I get there just in time to see Idris bolt from cover to cover before making a dash for the tree line opposite us.

Talon gives me the evil eye, and I shake my head. “It could be Dad. I have a right to know.”

“You’re a hostage,” he grumbles. “You have no rights.”

Idris is gone. Three armed men follow him into the forest, but not before I spot the all-telling high-and-tight haircut my father insists his soldiers wear and the dark splotches on the backs of their necks where they’ve been tattooed.

“Dad,” I breathe. “He came.”

At the thought of my father, a rush of feeling I thought long dead gushes through me, and my throat closes up. Am I wrong about everything? Am I more to him than a public-relations tool?

Talon runs a hand down my back ever so lightly, but he doesn’t grab hold and he doesn’t try to stop me from screaming, either. I could run. I might get far enough for the soldiers to notice me, for them to take Talon out and rescue me.

Immediately the familiar trapped feeling returns, of being locked in a satin-lined box that I cannot escape. Despite how frightened and vulnerable I’ve been this past week, the desolation of my day-to-day life at home almost seems worse. That night at the steak dinner, I felt so dead inside. My gut twists.

The hand on my back warms me, even through all those layers of clothes. I can’t stop thinking of what’s passed between us. All that passion left me feeling freer, more alive than I’ve felt in years.

And the forest has no walls. So.

Decapitation if I stay.

Prisoner for life if I run.

I look up to find Talon staring not at the trailer but at me. His expression is tortured like he doesn’t know what to do. He sucks in his lips and grimaces. It’s almost as though he’s telling me, without words, that what happens next is up to me.

A pine bough tickles my neck, reminding me that I’m alive here, so very alive. I don’t want to be a puppet anymore. I don’t want to leave.

I touch his sleeve, and my eyes search his for answers. Right, like I’ll find them written there in print. I lick my lips.

“Will you kill me?” I ask in a low, desperate voice.

He shakes his head at me like he thinks it’s funny that I’d take him at his word. But I need to hear him say it.

“Swear it, Talon. You won’t kill me and you won’t let them hurt me, either.”

He seizes my hand in an iron grip and pulls me closer, so close that you couldn’t slide a piece of paper between us. “I won’t kill you. I want you to suffer every moment of every day for the rest of your life. I want you to remember what you did and have it eat you up inside, but I won’t kill you. You’re mine now. I told you that.” He says it in that flat deadpan voice, so I know it’s true.

His gray eyes go almost black, and a current of emotion flows, I swear, through us both. I can’t say it’s love, but it’s desperation, and need, and commitment. I can’t help feeling like he’s just made a vow.

I squeeze his hand back with both of mine.

“I don’t know why, but I believe you,” I whisper. I glance back at the trailer and shake my head. If I’m wrong about him, I’m dead.

I retreat a couple steps into the woods, and Talon’s eyes widen as though he can’t believe I’ve chosen him. There’s wonder there and something else, but it passes so quickly I can’t interpret it.

That’s when a spatter of machine-gun fire rips into the trailer. My heart lurches as I realize whoever is firing doesn’t care who’s in there. Doesn’t care if they kill me, too.

Three figures circle around back and into my line of view. One kneels down by the shit pit and balances a rocket launcher on his shoulder. My lungs stop working. A black hole rips into my chest and eats my heart. Anguish deeper than anything I’ve ever felt crushes me as the truth becomes clear.

“Jesus.” Talon is tugging on my arm, and even he looks shocked. “Goddamn it, move!”

There is no going against that tone. The logic either. I let him guide me through our flight because right now, my mind is lost. Rational thought has been replaced by bottomless despair. As I stumble over a branch, a boom sounds behind us and a fireball rises up over the trees.

This is no rescue mission.

I so badly wanted to be wrong.

Branches and thorns drag my coat and snag my hair as Talon flies through the woods, half tearing my arm out as he lifts me along like I’m no more than a toddler. The scent of burning chemicals reaches us. We can’t have gone very far.

I trip. Talon catches me, and he sweeps me up fireman style.

“Don’t!”

He tosses me over his shoulder. Oh my God. My ass is like right there, and I’m not fat or anything, but I’m just going to slow him down this way.

“Talon—”

“Shut it. If they’re half as good as you say they are, they’ll do a sweep of the area. One set of footprints will tell them they’re only following one person. A big person, not you.”

That shuts me up. It even cheers me ever so slightly, if you call going from despair to panic a cheering. Feeling more than useless, I at least try to keep my head up and watch for pursuers. But it’s awkward, and soon the blood pooling in my head makes me feel like my brain will pop.

Talon’s stride is long and purposeful, and it’s not long before the fumes from the fire dissipate. For now, I surrender to his plans, whatever they may be. It’s not like I’m an expert at…well, anything. This leaves me plenty of time to think. To feel.

I’d actually thought for a few short minutes that Dad had come to rescue me. This makes me seven kinds of a fool. The betrayal stings, and right now there’s a crack in my chest.

Eventually Talon sets me down. “Think you can keep up?”

I nod, and we take off again.

“Do you think they know we’re out here?” I ask.

“By now, yes. They will have swept the area.”

Another rush of fear sends my muscles into a clench. My legs feel like they’re made of lead. I picture Dad when I was back in junior high, proudly clapping at my dance recitals. Bastard.

The frigid winter air singes my lungs, and I have no hat. My breath comes in wheezes, but I’m not about to let that slow me down. Then I catch the faint hum of a snowmobile engine.