Immortally Embraced

chapter ten




It was full dark when I woke, snuggled next to Marc. I stretched my legs, entwined with his under the afghan. It was almost easy to forget where we were—when we were. I’d give anything for the last ten years to be one long, bloody, awful dream.

I burrowed in tighter. How many times had we lain just like this back at my little bungalow on Camp Street?

My stomach clenched. God, I was an idiot. He’d crushed me when he left for the war. It had almost killed me when word came that he was dead. I closed my eyes, hypersensitive to the feel of his chest under my cheek, his arm around me. It had taken years to get over this man. And now I was signing up for it again.

This time, I had no hope. I knew we could never be together.

Beyond this brief oasis, the menace of the limbo desert hung like the blade of a guillotine.

This wasn’t New Orleans and Marc wasn’t my soon-to-be fiancé. We were five klicks off a hell vent. I was in enemy territory, taking a stupid crazy risk just so that I could stick my neck out even farther and confront a murdered soul.

And I was making love to a man I’d never see again.

His arm tightened around me. “You okay?” he asked, sleepy.

“No,” I said, sitting up. I was sick with it. “This was a mistake.”

“Hey,” he said, bracing himself on an elbow, his hair tousled. “We had one more chance. We made the most of it.”

My heart shrank into my stomach. “You’re not affected in the least.” I felt like my guts had been ripped out while he’d had a nice time. “Am I the only one torn up about this?”

Now I got a reaction out of him. Confusion. “We both understood,” he said, as if I were the one causing the problem.

He reached out to touch me and I scooted out of the way. I couldn’t believe he could be so casual about this. “Yes, I understand plenty,” I said, taking the comforter with me. I saw it clearly for the first time. I was raw with it. “You were never the one who had trouble leaving.”

Before he could respond, the hutch door rattled.

“Stay there,” Marc said, launching himself out of bed as the chair that was still halfway blocking the threshold pitched forward and fell.

My heart skipped a beat as the door crashed open and a looming shadow filled the entryway. “What is this?”

“A rude awakening,” Marc said, moving to block the intruder. Moonlight filtered in behind the hulking form.

I brought my hand to my chest as Marc lit the lantern. It was Oghul. If I’d been any more relieved, I would have hugged the hairy battering ram.

The door smacked closed behind him as he strolled into the tent. “Stop the sex,” he frowned, firelight playing off the individual plates on his chest armor.

“Good advice,” I said, spotting my bra on the lamp shade. “I wish I’d have thought of that earlier.”

Marc gave me a narrow-eyed look.

A little too late, I tried to cover up with the afghan, but the fricking thing had about a million holes. I focused on the berserker. “I know you’re used to seeing Marc naked,” I said, recalling the limbo wastelands, “but you need to wait outside while I get dressed.”

Oghul didn’t even blink. “It is time,” he said, as if that were the only thing that mattered. “And the soldiers. They are talking about what is going on in here.”

Marc nodded. “We’ll have her out of here in a minute. Go.”

Oghul’s expression clouded. “There will be talk of me outside your tent. I do not blend well.”

I found a pillow to shove in front of my afghan. He wasn’t staying in here.

“Act natural,” Marc said, leading him the rest of the way.

The Mongol looked a bit like a scared puppy as Marc slammed the door on him.

“Act natural?” I asked, scrambling off the bed. “A berserker?”

“He knows his limits better than you’d think,” Marc said, yanking open the bottom drawer of his dresser. “Unlike the rest of us,” he added under his breath.

“It’s a mistake I’m not going to make again,” I said, trying to figure out just what had happened to my clothes.

Pissed I could do. I reveled in it. Anger was about the only thing that kept me from cracking wide open.

He shot me a hard stare as he pulled out a clean uniform. “It did mean something to me.”

Um-hum. “I can tell you’re all torn up,” I said. “Where’d you fling my underwear?”

“Here,” he said, pulling my panties from the tent supports above the bed.

Oh, well, naturally.

Shirt tucked under his arm, he drew his pants on and buttoned them. “I’m just better at compartmentalizing.”

Yeah? Compartmentalize this. I made sure to catch his eye as I slipped on my red panties. His uniform shirt fell to the floor unnoticed and I could swear his gaze threw sparks as I drew the lacy underwear over my hips. “Sorry. I didn’t realize we were holding back.”

“You were never this bold before,” he said, his voice strained.

“Do you like it?” I asked, standing before him in nothing but my lacy red bottoms.

He drank me in like a man dying of thirst. “Yes.”

“Too bad,” I said, turning my back as I rescued my bra from the lamp shade, giving him a great view of my ass. “I’m leaving tonight.”

Oghul gave the door three swift knocks. “You come now.”

Then, as if he hadn’t made his point quite clear enough, he kept pounding until a thin crack formed down the middle.

“I don’t think he’s kidding,” I said, located my uniform pants and jacket behind the bed.

Marc tugged on his shirt and began tying his boots. “This isn’t over,” he said, glaring at me.

“Okay, sure.” I said, flip. “Maybe you can take me out to dinner sometime.” I tapped my finger against my chin. “Oh wait…”

He finished tying his boots, grabbed his jacket, and banged out of the tent.

Not my fault if he couldn’t face the music.

I was still down a T-shirt and a boot. I got down on my hands and knees and located both under the bed. Then I quickly finished dressing. I should have been embarrassed to have fallen into bed so easy, and in an enemy camp no less.

Never again.

Next to the desk, I found the duffel I’d brought.

Rodger and I had packed a flashlight and extra batteries. I stuffed them into my pant pocket. That left the other pocket for Marius’s tricked-out silver-and-bronze snub-nosed pistol. I studied the exotic spiderweb-looking knob on the side. He’d called it an energy disruptor. I cranked it all the way up and slipped it into my pocket.

There was no telling what we’d find in the underground labs.

I left the rest of it behind.

It was a dark, starless night. The torches had been lit on either side of the path.

The air was chilly. Oghul and Marc were in a heated discussion in the shadows between the tents. They spoke in low, urgent tones.

When Oghul saw me, he straightened. “It must be tonight,” he said to both of us.

“I know that,” Marc said, scowling. “Let’s go.” He wrapped an arm around me as we headed for the main part of camp.

I shook him off.

“Are you pissed at me or the situation?” he asked.

I didn’t want to talk about it. There was nothing left to say.

“I’m glad you’re being mature about this,” he said to my back.

Despite my best efforts, he insisted on walking next to me. Jerk.

“I had Oghul do some advance work for us,” he said, as if he were the one who’d been wronged. “It seems the emergency exit, which never has a guard, now has three.”

“Lovely.” This was so screwed up. “Do they know we’re coming?”

“I don’t know,” Marc said. It was plain that he was worried. “It may be new since the murder. It may be that they’re watching us.”

My heart sped up.

Nights in the desert were cool, but nevertheless, I was beginning to sweat. The torches lining the path cast eerie shadows.

It would be easy for old army security forces to hide in the darkness and watch. I could be caught and executed as a spy before I even had a chance to snoop. “What are we going to do?”

He kept his eyes on the path ahead of us. “We have a backup plan to bypass the guards.”

“Something you’ve done before?” I asked.

“No.” Marc was strung tight. “One step at a time,” he said, his voice low. “For now, I’ll be happy if we make it to the main path.”

I gave him my best what-the-f*ck.

His eyes darted over the shadowy road ahead. “If they know something, they’ll arrest us right away.”

Well now, that was a comforting thought.

“Almost there,” Oghul gritted out behind us.

I could see the lights up ahead. I looked over my shoulder at Oghul and the inky darkness behind us. Just a little bit longer. I returned my focus to the light. We could do this.

A pair of soldiers stepped out from a side path. “Hey you!”

My heart leapt to my throat. No. We were so close. These were cyclops guards, MPs.

Marc gripped my arm protectively. His other hand went down to his side and I was suddenly terrified that he had a weapon. Cyclops weren’t immortal, but they were damn hard to kill. Especially in the middle of a MASH camp.

They stopped in the path in front of us, blocking us.

The one on the right looked me up and down. “By the blood of Cerberus,” he snarled, then chuckled low in his throat. “You finally took a slave girl.”

For gods’ sake.

“I can smell you all over her.” The bald one on the left grinned, openly leering. “It’s about time. We were starting to think you were gay.”

Marc barked out a laugh. “Just because I have higher standards than you a*sholes doesn’t mean I like guys.”

“It doesn’t help that you play chess with those immortal Greeks,” the guard on the right said with a shrug.

His buddy nodded. “You know the old Greek army,” he said, matter-of-fact.

Marc snorted. “I wasn’t there.”

Neither was the cyclops. He couldn’t have been more than six hundred. After that, the one-eyed MPs were forced into early retirement. Lucky bastards.

I stiffened as an entire squad of elite troops marched down the main path ahead of us. “What are they doing out so late?”

“Is one man not enough?” Old Baldy leered a bulging, bloodshot eye, and his buddy joined right in.

Marc’s grip on my arm tightened. “Too bad for you I don’t share.”

“Gotta go,” I added, as he ushered me past the perverts.

When we were out of earshot, Marc leaned back toward Oghul. “That isn’t normal. The troops on the road.”

“No.” The Mongol breathed heavily behind us as we made it onto the main path. “Still. If they knew, they’d arrest us.”

“Ah, well, there you go,” I said, practically jogging to keep pace with them. “No problem, then.”

“This way,” Oghul said, leading us across the center courtyard. With a glance back, we ducked into the shadows next to the main supply tent.

Oghul kept on, going past the tent and behind a small storage shed near the cemetery. I could see wooden tombstones learning awkwardly up the hill.

Marc pulled out a flashlight and so did I. Mine came from Rodger’s care packages. I couldn’t believe Marc had one, too.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“My mom sent it,” he said, aiming it at the ground.

“You really need to write her.”

“Not now,” he said under his breath, leading us over to an old storage shed. The ground dipped back here. He shone his light on a circular grate.

I tried to see what was down there. “This is your big plan?”

Oghul stood over us, breathing hard out of his mouth. “They will not let you in the front. The back is guarded.”

True, but, “What is this? Some kind of an exhaust vent?”

Apprehension crawled up my spine when I saw the ground around it was charred and black. They had some caustic experiments going on down there.

Marc crouched in front of the grate and aimed his light down as far as he could. The piping was made of smooth metal. “We work with toxic chemicals. There are vents all over camp.”

It smelled like burned hair. “It’s just like the old army to take care of its people,” I muttered, feeling the caustic air in the back of my throat. No telling what toxic debris they were blowing right into camp. The immortals didn’t mind. They didn’t get cancer.

Marc’s expression was grim. “They have my protest on file.” He turned his head and coughed into his sleeve. “This vent leads straight to the main research room.”

I hunkered next to him. “Where Dr. Keller died.”

Marc nodded. “It’s where he is now at least.”

Probably where he was murdered too. Ghosts tended to linger.

I straightened and double-checked my gun. I really didn’t like this vent idea, but it didn’t look like we had much choice.

Oghul turned his attention to the shadows behind us. “Hurry.”

Right. We were sitting ducks out here.

Marc stood next to me. “Go for it, Oghul.”

The berserker bent over the hole and seized the bars blocking it. He twisted his face, grunting as the bars groaned apart.

Marc dug in his pack and handed me the most bizarre-looking thing I’d seen in a while. It was a gas mask. Only this one looked like it had been issued in the early 1900s.

The seeing apparatus resembled two large bug eyes. A round breathing hole was capped with a red grille. A bendable, rubber tube like an old vacuum hose ran from under the breathing hole down to a small square pack designed to strap onto the back.

“You don’t have anything from this century?” I asked.

“You know the old gods,” Marc said.

Actually, I didn’t.

“This is just until you make it through the vent,” he continued. “I’ll go first.”

I was amazed he even had a working gas mask. I took it and strapped the pack to my back.

We were here. We had one shot, and I couldn’t chicken out now.

Oghul gripped Marc’s shoulder as he swung his feet into the opening. “Do not be irrational.”

Marc pointed his flashlight down the hole. “This coming from the berserker.”

“You don’t have a mask.” It was the first time I’d seen the Mongolian worried.

My stomach hollowed. “This is the only one.”

“Army regulations,” he said, shoving flashlights into his pockets.

Of course they only issued one.

Marc grabbed a pistol out of the bag and shoved a magazine into it.

“They do not issue masks to my kind,” Oghul said. “I’m not going down there.”

“Then you can’t go, either,” I told Marc. I could handle this. “We don’t need you breathing whatever turned the ground black.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Petra,” he said, then slipped down into the blackness.

He didn’t. I rushed to the hole. He did! The bastard was already in there. And he’d gone down fast. Goddamn it.

What was with him? Thinking he could risk himself like that. There was bravery and then there was driving the people who loved you nuts.

I shoved the gas mask on, breathing in the stale rubber air, making sure the filter was secured on my back. I had no peripheral vision from the eyeholes. I could barely look down. Oghul had to help me as I stumbled to the edge of the vent.

“You find him at the bottom,” he ordered.

I shoved down into the vent, feet first. My light bounced off the walls as I slid down about five feet and stopped. My vision was all screwed up. I could barely look down. My feet had gotten hung up on a twist in the pipe.

“Of all the—” My voice choked.

That’s right. Stay mad. Because if I really thought about what I was doing, I was going to freak out.

I eased around the curve in the vent, forcing myself downward as it leveled off.

My chest felt tight. I was closed in, trapped, the gray walls pressing down on me, inches from my nose.

My breath came hot and wet against the mask. Stifling. I wanted to rip it off. I wanted to yank off the filter pressing into my back, jamming me into this narrowing network of pipes.

The walls were getting smaller. I could feel them closing in.

I swallowed, tasting blood in the back of my throat.

Get a grip.

I wouldn’t get stuck. I couldn’t.

Marc had made it. He was down there somewhere.

I refused to let myself think he could be hurt, gasping for breath, because if I did, I really was going to panic.

Sweating, chest heaving, I inched forward.

I could make it. I could do it. I wasn’t going to die down here, stuffed into a pipe, trapped underground.

Alone.

I listened for Marc, for any sound beyond that of my own labored breathing.

As I pressed on, the pipe began to widen. Or maybe it was just my imagination. I didn’t know, didn’t care as I scooted forward more rapidly. I was just starting to think I might make it when I began sliding.

“No, no…” I gripped the sides, my sweaty palms sliding over the smooth metal sides. I could do this. I could make this.

The vent made a sudden, terrifying drop.

A scream caught in my throat as I hurtled down into the blackness.