One step at a time. You can mange that much
.
Brice squeezed her eyes tight and relied on Damien’s warm hand to guide her to the proper footholds. It occurred to her that she literally placed her life in his hands.
Are we aware of our obligation to the mob? It is the mob that labors in our fields, and serves in our houses—that man the navy, and recruit the army…You may call them the mob, but do not forget the mob too often expresses the true sentiments of the people.
—Letter from Lord Byron to Lord Holland, containing a draft of his speech to Parliament
A man is given a choice between loving women and understanding them.
—Ninon de Lenclos
As the sword is the worst argument that can be used, it should be the last. In this instance, it has been the first.
—Byron’s speech to Parliament, February 27, 1812
Damien went through the window first, checking carefully that the room he had chosen was in fact still empty. He would have been happier to continue on to the fifth floor via the drainpipe, but Brice was too cold to remain out in the weather. In fact, she was barely able to uncurl her fingers when he plucked her off the ledge and pulled her into the small, well-insulated office where he kept his computer and a rotary phone. He liked these machines and relied on them as much as anyone, but didn’t want all the ugly hardware in what he thought of as his real office. There was also the little matter of sometimes messing up the clock on his computer when it was storming.
Brice’s teeth were chattering loudly and her lips were pale blue. Damien put his rifle and handgun aside and then secured the window. After that, he set about warming her up. He rubbed her briskly from head to foot, getting the matted ice out of her hair and then taking off her boots, which were partially packed with snow. It took a few moments of massage before feeling returned to her feet, and when it did she tried bravely to stifle a moan.
“Sorry, love,” he said again, but softly and with one ear turned toward the door. He carefully pulled the gun from her pocket. She watched him, unblinking and eyes filled with tears. Her irises glowed in the light of the smoke detector, the only part of her that looked warm. “The good news is that there isn’t any sign of frostbite. You’re just very cold.”
“V-v-very, very cold,” she agreed, barely able to get the words out as the shivering increased and her teeth chattered like castanets. “W-where are we?”
“My computer office.”
Brice was able to make out a desk and a monitor. The floor was covered in some sort of rubber matting, and the desk and chair both had chains hanging from them. She knew that these were grounds, used to protect delicate equipment from the static electricity that could build up in carpets and clothing.
Other than that, the room was empty, austere even, and she found it extremely appealing. Not perhaps anything to excite an interior decorator, or to picture on Christmas cards, but it was warm, quiet, and free of monsters. That made it the most appealing room she could imagine.
Brice sneezed violently and then gasped with pain. She was so cold that it felt as if her skull were made of shattered glass and its stiletto tips were being driven out through her face and eyes. The only other sensation in her body was long, shooting pains that traversed her legs from ankles to thighs. Her muscles hadn’t liked the rigors of the climb any more than the bitter cold. Suddenly it was all she could do just to stand.
“Let’s go into the bathroom,” Damien said, then picked her up when she didn’t immediately respond. “There’s a heat lamp in there. Poor love—it’s cold enough to freeze the teats off a snow leopard.”
Brice curled into his warmth, slipping her arms around his neck. Lifting her limbs required massive effort. She was so tired.
“Y-you’re better than a-a-any heat lamp,” she said groggily.
Damien couldn’t help but smile, but it was an expression tinged with grimness. The storm was rising, and his wildness was too. A part of him wanted nothing more than to lay Brice on the floor and have his way with her, over and over again.
“I’m glad you prefer me to electronic appliances. Some of them leave a fellow feeling unmanned.”
Brice actually chuckled. “I’ve n-n-never owned a vibrator,” she confessed. “They sound too much like a swarm of bees. Hard to get in the mood with that image in my head.”
Damien set her on her feet, but kept one arm around Brice’s waist in case her legs buckled. He reached out with his right hand and flipped on the heat lamp, then locked the door behind him.
Nothing happened.
“No power. I forgot,” she whispered in the dark and sagged against him in disappointment. He felt the shudders running through her body.
“I have candles, though. We can have light,” he said. Damien ordered himself to start thinking straight and reached for the lighter and candles he kept near the sink. There were a half dozen of them, and it took only a moment to set them ablaze.
“I daren’t run you a bath. They might hear the water,” he said, finally getting a look at her pale face and feeling fresh alarm. “But you need to get warm.”
“Then help me,” she said, turning her face up to him. “You can make me warm.”
Damien looked into her eyes, trying to read what was there. All he could see was a weird combination of passion, affection and maybe shock. There was no anger, no horror, no hysterics.
He wanted her. His brain seemed stuck on this thought.
“Help me get these wet clothes off,” Brice whispered, her voice also trembling. “My hands are still too numb. I can’t manage the buttons.”
“Of course.” Damien cursed the storm, which not only affected his body but also his ability to think. If it got worse, he’d start having hallucinations, perhaps seeing ghosts of long-dead enemies. It had happened before.
Carefully he backed Brice against the counter beside the shower so that she would be braced if her legs felt weak. A few bottles overturned as she laid her unsteady hands flat on the granite.
Damien started to undress her. His body reacted as he knew it would. Such lack of control was embarrassing, but he decided that if she could ignore it, he could as well. Concentration on the task at hand—that was the key.
“I thought—a few times—that you might be dead,” Brice told him. Her voice was hushed, perhaps by returning caution, perhaps by unpleasant emotion that tended to constrict the muscles of the throat. “But I didn’t let myself believe it. Because I couldn’t.”
“Don’t think about it,” he said, kneeling so he could slide her pants off. Her entire body was alabaster white and as cold as the snow they had crawled through. He added more to himself than to her, “It serves no purpose to torture ourselves. I had a few bad moments worrying about you too. But we’re obviously both fine, so we have to let it go.” He paused. “We have to, or we won’t be able to go on.”
But was she fine? Damien had seen corpses with better color, and she was moving awkwardly. Like she didn’t have complete control of her body yet.
“I couldn’t
not
think about it,” she answered. “The last man I lov—cared for—died while I looked on, helpless to stop what was happening.” There was the resonance of old grief in her voice that he didn’t want to hear. It stung to think he was responsible for reawakening her pain. “I never want to do that again.”
“What happened?” he heard himself ask as he worked the wet clothes down her thighs. Damien didn’t have any desire to own the pain he heard in her voice, didn’t want it added to the library of tragedies that touched those he cared about, but he also needed to know what had happened that had put so much hurt in her soul. And if he could do anything to heal it.
Brice hesitated a moment as though considering whether she should go on, and for a second he thought maybe they would be spared the sharing of a painful memory.
But this wasn’t a night for anyone to be spared. Brice began speaking.
“It was Christmas Eve. We’d been to a party at a friend’s house. Tabitha urged us to stay over because the roads were icy, but Mark had been careful about not drinking and he wanted to get home so that I could have my Christmas present in the morning. I had a bad feeling, but he insisted that we leave.” She swallowed and then laid a hand in Damien’s hair. Her hand shook.
“The roads should have been deserted that late on Christmas Eve, but we had another neighbor who had also been to a party, and he wasn’t as careful about drinking and then driving on icy roads.” She stopped, breathing hard.
“It’s all right. I understand,” Damien said, tossing her pants aside. Still kneeling, he laid his face against her bare stomach and wrapped his arms around her. He began stroking up and down her legs and back, trying to chase away the chills that had invaded her body and spirit.
“Our car ended up upside down in a stream, which was rising fast because of the storm.” She swallowed again. “I was trapped under the dashboard, unable to get to my seat belt or Mark’s. Both my legs and my pelvis were broken. My arms and head were pinned by tree roots. Movement was impossible. I was on the high side of the embankment, but Mark…My only consolation was that he was unconscious when the water rose over his head. He didn’t know what was happening. But I knew. The moon was quite bright that night. I saw it all. I sat in the cold and watched him die and there was nothing—
nothing
—I could do.”
“Stop,” Damien whispered against her skin, her terrible words piercing his heart. “Please stop. You’ve had enough pain. You don’t need to think about this now.”
She’d had enough. He’d had enough. But he knew that there could be more pain coming. They would not have an easy escape from Dippel. More people were going to die. Damien didn’t say that, though. There was only so much that a person could endure, and Brice was nearing her limit.
“Yes, you’re right,” she finally answered, taking a deep breath and then another. “But you see why I didn’t want it to happen again. Why I hated waiting, helpless. You can’t leave me again, Damien. I have to know where you are and that you’re all right. I need to know what I can do to help—not just stand around and be helpless.”
“I understand.”
“I pray you do.”
Her hands went from his hair to his shirt and began tugging at the collar. Thinking she wanted him to stand, Damien rose quickly. But she didn’t stop pulling on his shirt, and he realized that she was doing her awkward best to undress him.
Body warmth. Of course. That was what she needed. It was the fastest way to get warm. He was glad one of them was thinking clearly. It would be bad if the storm craziness affected her too.
Damien began helping her with his shirt.
“I do understand what you are saying, love, and why you feel this way—truly I do. But, Brice,” he began, suddenly wondering how to tell her that he was even odder than she suspected, less human, and that this difference was what was going to allow him to kill these creatures that threatened them. “Please believe me when I say that it’s better that I do this alone. First off, Dippel may not even know about you. After all, he is only after me, and there hasn’t been anyone in my life for a long, long time. Having you as a secret weapon is just good strategy. Secondly…well, let’s say that you needn’t worry so much about my health. I am not—I’m not that easy to kill. Yes, I can be hurt and even die if the wound is sufficiently grievous. But I’ve been shot six times in battle—and six times I’ve lived.” He didn’t mention the time he had been bayoneted.
He waited. The silence spun out uncomfortably.
“It’s because of the lightning?” she asked, clearly not wanting to. His shirt was tossed away. She reached for his waist. “It did something else to you?”
“Yes. I heal very quickly.”
“And you’re very strong. I noticed that when you pulled open the elevator.”
“And I’m very strong,” he agreed levelly. “And very fast.”
And very angry
.
“My German isn’t especially fluent, and I may have made some mistakes in translation, but you are saying that you’re like those…soldiers Dippel wrote about?” Her voice held no expression. Neither did her white face.
“Not exactly. They are unusual. I’m…” He tried to think of some way to describe himself that wouldn’t seem unbearably horrible.
“Zombies, you called them. Did you mean it?” she asked. Her gaze never wavered.
“Yes—at least that’s as good a word as I can come up with. They started off as dead things, and Dippel pieced them together, attaching dead limbs to living hearts and organs. Their brains are fried, their wills hijacked, their bodies not especially quick but very determined to carry out whatever mission they are given.” They weren’t quick, not by his standards. They would seem plenty fast to Brice, though. It was another thing he chose not to say. “It isn’t magic or voodoo that animates them, but the result is the same. The dead are up and walking around.”
“You’re talking about the real Frankenstein monsters. You’re saying that everything in Dippel’s journal was true. He really raised the dead.”
“Yes. It seems his experiments succeeded. He’s finally managed to make his nearly undying soldier.” Damien looked full into her eyes, waiting to see if she understood the implications, and if the understanding repulsed her.
Brice finally nodded. “I see,” she said, and looked away quickly, as though suddenly unable to bear the sight of him. Her next words surprised him.
“Aren’t you going to finish undressing? I know what you’re thinking, but this doesn’t change anything. I still want you, you know. I probably always will.”
Her eyes were deep pools. He wanted to jump into them and dive to the very bottom where her deepest thoughts lay. And even if he could do that, Damien knew it wouldn’t be enough.
Her declaration seemed to open some floodgate of emotion inside Damien, and Brice found herself pulled from the narrow counter and held tight against the entire length of his body. Between them, steam began to rise. She could feel his heat penetrating her organs and limbs, driving out the horrible cold.
“Consider this carefully. It’s a little early for us to be thinking about happy-ever-afters,” he said, and abruptly his voice was low and rough. Outside, thunder roared, shaking the building.