Stolen Melody (Snow and Ash #2) (18 page)

“Please!” I reach out to touch him, and he seizes my arm and yanks me up against his hard body. He grabs my ass, grinds his dick into me, and kisses me viciously. I don’t care. All I want is him. I let him do whatever he wants. Then he flings me away, and I barely catch myself from falling.

“Is this what you want?” he demands, wiping me off his mouth.

I nod. I can’t speak. I sob like some weak, pathetic girl, but I can’t help it.

He grits his teeth and clenches his fists, as though he wants to punch me. He visibly restrains himself. “I fucking loved you!”

My heart clenches. “I love you, too.”

“Don’t, okay? Just don’t. It’s over, Mel. We’re over. Don’t even bother coming home.”

This can’t be happening. It can’t. I wrap my arms around myself, half bent with grief. “But I’m pregnant,” I squeak.

He looks me up and down. “You ain’t pregnant. No way could you know that already. You’re just using it to get yourself off the hook.”

I shake my head. “That’s not true. Axel, I love you. Only you.”

I reach for him again, but he bats my hand away. “Funny. A minute ago, you said you’d have fucked that guy if he hadn’t said no.”

“Yes,” I sob. I’ve got snot dripping down my face, and I can’t even care. “I would have done anything to keep you alive.”

“I don’t need this shit. Go back to Sadie’s Bend, Melody. Go anywhere.”

“Please don’t do this!”

He looks at me one last time and snorts. “You know, you turned out to be exactly like the Melody I imagined you’d be. All horny and dying for it, no matter who’d give it to you.”

I gasp. I’m too stunned, too choked up to answer.

“Just stay the fuck away from me, Mel. I’ll fucking kill you.” He stalks off to join the others.

I stay where I am. I can’t move. If I take even one step, that means it’s over. It can’t be over. It can’t.

“I’ll claim you, if you want.” Zack stands beside me. I didn’t even hear him approach. I take in his soft brown eyes, the kindness that radiates from him, and I realize I know only two truly decent men: Pastor North and Zack.

“Honey, you’re all bloody. You’re a mess.” He smooths the hair away from my eyes, just like Axel used to do. I screw up my face and turn away.

I should push it. I should follow Axel, demand that he listen to me, let me prove that I love him.

The others are moving off, and it’s only Zack and me now. “Come on, Melody,” he says, taking my arm. “Let’s get you home.”

I could go with Zack. I could go back to the fort and try and try and try. It won’t work, though. I’m looking truth in its terrible red eyes, and it spells death to even the smallest hope. All that’s left now is to face Colonel Barry and any consequences there are, or run off to a new town.

“You should go, Zack.” My voice is clear, steady.

“I’m not leaving you here. These people—”

I cock my head to the side. “I think we both know it’s just as dangerous for me here as it is at the fort.”

“Miss Melody.” It’s a plea, one laced with dismay.

“Axel hates me.” I swallow. “I just killed a hundred men. I don’t feel very good, Zack. I think I’m going to stay here for a while.”

He opens his mouth like he’s about to argue, but the words fade on his lips and he takes a step back. After a moment he turns and follows the others.

I hold myself up until I can no longer see them. I’m dizzy and I’m sick and a slab of grief too heavy to bear presses down on me. I lower myself and sit in the fresh falling snow.

I’ll sit here for a while. It feels good to let the snow cover me and cover me and cover me, just like it buries everything else. I can let it paint me clean.
 

I close my eyes.

They’ll let me go soon. Though where I’ll go from here, I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it. I clutch my belly, just like I have so many times these past few weeks. My poor baby never had a chance. Too young even for me to know if it was a he or a she. Ectopic, they said. They tell me I almost died during the rupture, and then of course infection set in. I’ve been in the hospital nearly a month.

A doctor told me I might never have children.

Voices rise in the hall as I move to the bathroom. My hair hangs below my waist, and I feel its weight as it swings with my steps. I flick on the light. Such a little thing, one I used to take for granted. There’s a mirror, and for the first time in weeks I raise my eyes and look.

“You can’t go in there,” comes a shrill voice from the hall. “The last thing she needs is to see you.”

I should have died the night of the fire. Then I wouldn’t have to feel this desperate regret, this hopeless emptiness. I never thought the role I played in the attack that night would end with eighty-seven men burning alive. Naively I thought the fighting would happen outside, or perhaps we could just free the prisoners and let them disappear into the darkness. Barry’s men were all at the Moonlight because I lured them there. And now some girl named Shannon is grieving for a boy who was crazy in love.

When Axel thrust me away so he could charge the colonel, I smacked face-first into the pillar and earned a concussion. Mia returned and found me the following morning, unconscious and hypothermic. I never asked why she came back. Maybe she felt guilty for ratting me out. Who knows?
 
But Barry’s guards discovered us just after Mia showed. Their medic marveled that I survived so long in the cold. It didn’t surprise me at all. You don’t go to hell after you die. You earn it, and then you feel it with every breath day after day after day until, mercifully, you fade into nothing. God means for me to live a long time, I know.

Colonel Barry had me moved to a working hospital at the territory headquarters in Asheville, North Carolina. I don’t know why he didn’t just chuck me back into the flames. Maybe he realized I was supposed to die with the others that night. Maybe he felt sorry for me. I really don’t know. All I know is that for two days I hugged myself constantly, hugged the tiny baby cradled in my belly like it was my sole reason for living.

The last link to Axel is now gone.

The face in the mirror is the same and yet horribly different. I see the monster in me. I trace my lips with my finger, lips that kissed and bruised under my lover’s command. I peel a flake of dried skin, and although I feel pain and see the blood, I just don’t care. I’m empty…flesh with no soul, a monster.

That last living piece of me cries for the man I loved and lost, or thought I lost. Axel was never mine. I’m nothing, just a puppet, a slave, a victim; I have been since I was thirteen years old. They gave me a name, Imogen, but it never belonged to me. They called me Melody, but it was a lie. I’m that thing you grab by the hair so I’ll do what you want. Just a stupid cunt that fell for the wrong guy and thought it was love, even reveled in his roughness like it was my salvation.

My eyes are the same coffee brown, but the lips that were made for kissing are pale and cracked. That hair, so often pulled in the heat of passion, later became a means to control and punish. How did I not see my ugliness before? Seductress, murderer, victim. Bile centipedes up my throat.

From my pocket I retrieve the scissors I stole from a nurse. I’m dimly aware of an argument in the hallway, but it’s worlds away. The first lock of hair hits the floor. Another. Ignoring the scuffle outside, I don’t stop until there’s nothing left but stubs. My eyes are dry, but grief claws through me and I can’t stop. When there’s nothing left to scissor, I scrape the blade against my scalp, not caring about the cuts, the abrasions, the blood. I won’t stop until it’s gone, until it’s all—

“Melody! What have you done?”

I turn to Mia, the woman who hates me.

“I need help!” Mia calls, panic in her voice.

But it’s not the doctor who comes. It’s Axel.

His eyes widen. “Melody!”

He yanks me to him and presses my face to his chest. “Jesus! What have I done?”

“Sir! Get out or we’re calling security!” demands a woman in scrubs. She holds a scalpel like she means business.

“I’m sorry I left you,” he whispers as though the woman isn’t even there. “I’m sorry I said those things to you. Melody, you’ve got to believe me. When I thought of you with another man, I snapped and I—”

“You’re a fucking asshole,” spits Mia.

“Get out!”

“Go to hell!”

He scoops me up in his arms, and I’m far too weak to fight him.

“These people are good to her.” Mia flutters after us as Axel strides out into the hall. “You leave her here, you miserable piece of shit!”

“Axel.” I’m so tired.

He pulls me tighter to his chest. “I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you.”

“Let me go.” Please let me go away.

His jaw hardens as he rushes out a side door to a waiting snowmobile.

“Axel, please. Just leave me. I can’t anymore. I just can’t.” Knowing I’m just his fuck-hole puppet will kill me. I can’t live with the guilt of all the things I’ve done or knowing what he really thinks of me. I deserve all of it.

“You have no choice,” he says, and I swear he sounds like he’s about to cry. “I’m not leaving you like this.”

He plops me down onto the front of the snowmobile and mounts behind me. Seconds later we’re off.

The wind tears against my shorn head and the cuts I’ve made. The feel of his body pressed to mine punishes me. I wanted so badly for him to forgive me, for us to have this baby together, for him to love me like I loved him. None of that is possible. I see now that he’s too damaged to ever feel love, and I could never deserve it.

He gets maybe twenty miles before the motor stutters and he has to stop. He dismounts, lifts a fuel tank off the back of the machine, and refuels. I smell french fries: corn diesel.

He gets back on, pulls me close against his body, and I completely lose it. I always was a crybaby. Now I’m sobbing out every breath in my body. Axel clutches me to him and buries his face against my bloodied scalp. “I’m sorry,” he mutters over and over. “I’m so sorry.”

Slowly, anger replaces despair. “Why did you come back? Why?”

“Because I love you.” His voice catches.

I shake my head. “You can’t.”

He stiffens against me and restarts the engine. It’s almost dark-fall before he stops at an abandoned farmhouse with half its roof caving in. He shoulders a large pack, then bends to scoop me up.

“I can walk,” I snarl.

Ignoring me, he pulls me tight against his chest and carries me inside, down the stairs into the basement, and switches on an LED lantern. “Stay here.”

Where else am I going to go? He climbs the stairs as I settle into the blankets.

It’s cold in here, but not as cold as I feel inside. Tentatively, I brush my fingers against my scalp. Crusted bald spots dotted with tufts of hair tell me how bad I really look. It’s not nearly as bad as I feel.

Axel returns some time later with a load of wood. He vents the basement’s only window and soon has a fire going on the cold concrete. He gathers me onto his lap and burrows his face in my neck. “I never was good. Never. You’re the only good thing that’s ever happened to me, Melody. The only good thing.”

“I’m not good.” I’m less than a cockroach. “I killed all those men. I killed them.”

“No!” He jerks my head up so I have to meet his eyes. “Centos gave that order. You had nothing to do with it.”

“That doesn’t excuse—”

“You thought it’d be a fair fight. You were told it would be. You had nothing to do with that slaughter.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Colonel Barry was such a nice man. He didn’t deserve what you did to him.”

He sighs. “He’s dead, then?”

I shake my head. “He’s in bad shape. Half his face burned off.”

“And he let you go. Jesus, I fucking went nuts on him. I should have just grabbed you and got out of there.”

I don’t know what to say.

“When I lived in the streets, there was this older guy, an Army vet. He taught me how to survive. If it wouldn’t have been for him, I’da been dead before I reached my twentieth birthday. That or I’d be fucked up on dope.”

I nod. I know he had it bad growing up.

“Take what you can, he told me, because no one is going to give it to you.” He chuckles. “He was right about that one. Don’t put up with anyone’s shit was another one of his rules. Everyone wants something, so question everyone’s motives; always work on your fighting skills, and never be the victim. Be the dominator or be dead. All good rules for the apocalypse, I’ve got to say.”

My mood sinks. None of this resembles in any way the things I experienced growing up. He’s right. He was raised to survive the Yellowstone disaster.

“Were there any other rules?” Really, because no one’s ever given me any post-apocalyptic advice except
play the piano and don’t tell anyone who you are.
I could use some instruction.

He’s silent for a moment, and I feel rather than see him nod.

“He had a couple things to say about women.”

I stiffen. “Like what?”