“We’re in Oregon,” Huntley said as he dropped some dry wood onto the stone-encircled campfire.
“Okay.” Elle wrapped her arms around her waist as she cautiously approached him. “Why are we in Oregon? Do you live around here?”
“It’s outside the search area.” He brought over a pair of lawn chairs from the back of his truck. “Come and sit down, Lillian. I’ll tell you as much as I can.”
After scanning the area and finding no sign of anyone who would hear her scream, Elle went to the fire and sat down.
“Don’t want you to catch a chill.” Huntley covered her with a dark wool blanket, tucking it in around her but taking his hands away when he felt her stiffen. “I am your friend. Don’t be afraid of me, girl.”
“How can I not be?” she asked without thinking. Then she quickly added, “Mr. Huntley, this is kidnapping. They’ll put you in jail. But if you take me back right now, I won’t say anything to the police. I promise.”
“You can’t go back.” He sat down and held his head in his hands for a minute before he straightened. “My name isn’t Neil Huntley, and I’m not American.” The country accent disappeared from his voice, replaced by a soft, liquid accent. “I was sent here by the men I work for to hunt down this creature, the one that attacked you. It’s in a kind of eternal torment, and it can’t stop itself anymore. The only way to end its suffering is to kill it.”
He was genuinely, deeply nuts. “You could tell the police about it,” she suggested. “They’d help you find it.”
“They wouldn’t believe me, and even if they did, I could never let them near it. It would kill them all before they could even hurt it.” He stared at the tiny sparks rising up with the smoke from the fire. “It remembers women from when it was a man. It loved many women. I think that’s why it didn’t kill you.” He sighed. “Or maybe it was hoping to use you to lure me up there.”
Elle’s instincts told her to agree with him, to go along with anything he said so that he would feel she wasn’t the enemy. The shock had faded, however, and she suddenly felt a terrible anger. Who was this man to snatch her like this, to take her away from Evelyn and keep her like some stray dog? She didn’t know what he’d done to her throat wound to make it disappear, but it wasn’t right. She could have died. She should be dead, no thanks to him.
“I want you to take me home, Mr. Huntley,” she told him. “I’ll tell the police you found me, as long as you swear that you’ll never do this to anyone again.”
He stared at her. “Haven’t you been listening? You were dead when I found you, Lillian. The monster tore out your throat. I was carrying your body to my horse when you began coughing up blood.” He pointed at her neck. “I watched your wounds close up and vanish, as if they’d never been. The only thing on this earth that can do that isn’t human. You’re not human.”
Anger suffused her, spiking through her head and making her hair stand on end. It lifted her up, taking away the soreness in her back and the lingering dryness in her throat.
“Lillian?”
She rose up out of the chair. “Take me back,” she said, her ruined voice sounding low and rough, her entire body shaking. “Now.”
Huntley stood, his eyes wide. “Lillian.”
After it happened, Elle was terrified. She dragged Neil Huntley’s body back inside the camper, and only after she had hefted him onto the bunk did she realize how strong she had become.
He has to weigh two hundred pounds. I can’t lift two hundred pounds. But she had, and her arms weren’t aching even a little. It’s adrenaline. It’ll go away.
Huntley moaned.
“Oh, God.” She turned around, looking desperately for something to put over his chest and stanch the bleeding. Her head pounded as she began frantically searching through the cabinets, crying out in relief as she found a large first-aid kit. She knelt on the floor, grabbing at packages of gauze and tearing them open, making a pile of patches until she thought she might have enough. Then she got up and bent over Huntley, pushing aside the torn ribbons of what had been his shirt to expose the wound.
Four huge gashes ran across his chest, and when she blotted the welling blood from them, she saw that they went so deep the inner tissues bulged out like raw meat.
“I don’t know what to do, Mr. Huntley.” She piled the gauze over the wound and tried to tape it down, but the adhesive tape wouldn’t stick to his bloody chest, and oh, God, she was going to kill him; she knew she was—
“Lillian.” Huntley’s voice, like the whisper of a ghost, hummed in her ears. “I’m all right. You have to clean it. Stitch it.”
She stared down at the slits of his eyes. “Mr. Huntley, I’m not a doctor. I can’t do this.”
“You can. You watch Doc with the horses. Same thing.” The side of his mouth curled up. “Good … practice … ”
He’d fallen unconscious again.
Be a good girl, Lillian.
Elle turned her back on him and took several deep breaths. I can do this. I can save him.
She thought back to the time she had worked with Dr. Devereaux to treat an open wound on the side of one of the stock horses who had run afoul of some barbed wire.
Infection is the biggest problem, the vet had told her. We’ll give him a shot after we’re done, but you can start out right by making sure everything is clean: your hands, what you use on the wound, the wound, everything.
She used the tiny sink to wash her hands with the bar of soap in the little dish beside it, and wiped them dry with a paper towel. From the first-aid kit she took a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a small suture pack, and began putting together the same kind of setup the vet had arranged, so that everything she needed would be at hand.
Are you ready to fix up this big guy? the vet asked in her head.
“I’m ready.”
Neil Huntley opened his eyes, and touched the bandages wrapped around his chest.
“Don’t try to move, Mr. Huntley.” Elle came over to the bunk with a glass of water. She placed a straw in the glass and brought the end to his lips. “I wish I had something for the pain, but all you have in your kit is some aspirin, and I’m afraid that will make you start bleeding again.”
“Mauled?”
She nodded. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t lost my temper, if I’d just listened to you … ” When he shook his head, she took his limp hand in hers. “I’ve never hurt anyone in my life, Mr. Huntley. I would never have done this to you if I’d known. I’m so sorry.”
He tucked in his chin and looked at the bandage on his chest. She had run out of gauze after the second dressing change, and had started using his white undershirts.
“You remembered what to do,” he said. “You could have run away and left me here to bleed to death. But you stayed, and you lived up to the responsibility of your actions. It was very hard, wasn’t it?”
“I was so scared.” She covered her face and sobbed.
His hand came to rest on the top of her head. “You are a good child, Lillian.”
It took another week for Neil Huntley to heal enough to be able to drive. During those seven days, they discussed everything that had happened, and everything that mattered. Huntley couldn’t tell her a great deal about his life before coming to America, or anything about the men who had sent him there.
“We are born to this life, and take vows, like priests,” he explained when she pressed him for details. “As did my father, and his father, and his father before him. Thirty-two generations of my family have served. It is not the vows I took as much as the trust that I have been given along with my name. All of those who came before me made the same sacrifice. That is why I cannot break my vows, Lillian. Not even for you.”
They picked up supplies from a small town, and from there Huntley drove to Seattle, where he rented a small apartment for them. Elle, who had cut her hair and dyed it brown to match his, posed as his daughter. He stayed with her until he finished recovering from his injuries, at the same time teaching her how to cope with the terrible gift she had been given.
“Are you going to tell them about me?” she asked the night before he left for California.
He fell silent for a long time. “No, Lillian. I believe you can control yourself now.”
“But if I don’t, you’ll come after me,” she guessed.
“I hunt monsters, my dear. You are not a monster. You are the victim of one.” He gave her a troubled look. “But you are also dangerous, and if you are to make a place for yourself in this world, you must never forget that.”
“It won’t happen again,” she assured him. “I’ll be careful.”
“You have to do more than control yourself. You must not let anyone discover who and what you are. No doctors, no hospitals. You cannot confide in anyone.” He frowned, thinking. “You should not remain here in Seattle for too long. No more than a year, I think.”
“But I like it here,” she protested. “I’ve got a good job at the café, and I’m making friends.”
“You can’t stay here,” he told her. “You can’t stay anywhere. If you do, people will discover what you are.” He studied her face. “You’re still thinking of contacting your mother, after everything that’s happened?”
“I’m not a monster.” Ashamed, she ducked her head. “I wasn’t going to tell her where I am. I just want her to know I’m okay.”
“She will want to see you, Lillian, and in your loneliness you won’t be able to refuse her.” He sighed. “How long do you think you can control it? A week? A month? What happens when you lose your temper, or you simply have a bad dream? Does anyone deserve to die like that? Could you live with yourself, knowing you could have stayed away and spared her life?”