Stolen Melody (Snow and Ash #2) (5 page)

A collective gasp explodes from the membership.

Oh God.
 
Oh God.
 
The pine knot is all that matters.
 
The pine knot is—

“Aw, fuck!” says one of the marauders.

“Look at her. Take a good look at my mark.” He pushes me forward a half step. “I’m claiming this girl as mine. If any man tries to take her, it will be a fight to the death.”

“Imogen?” It’s Pastor North.

My parents lived in Denver. There’s no doubt in my mind that they died during or shortly after Yellowstone blew. After my manager died, I had nothing, no one. I’ll never be able to repay the kindness of this man who took me in and treated me like family. How can I face him now that I’ve, you know, done stuff in his house? He’s no more than five feet from me, and I can’t even look at him. I’m so afraid of what I’ll see in his face. I sniff back the bubble of snot that threatens to fall, but my chest shakes.
 
The pine knot is a lie; it’s the demon behind me that’s real.

“Come on,” Axel mutters, not unkindly. He takes my hand and starts for the aisle.

I fling one last, desperate look at my guardian.

He’s wearing this stunned look that’s tinged with sadness.

There’s a hole where my heart used to be.

I try to ignore the sour taste in my mouth as I turn my back to him and focus on the door. I have no idea what’s waiting for me on the other side, but there’s no way it’s anything good.

“How far is it?” Listen to me. We’ve only been walking an hour and already I’m tired.

Axel shrugs. “Twenty miles, maybe.”

“I’m glad you didn’t say fifty.” I’m only a little sarcastic.

“It’d be hard to control territory that big.”

He’s serious. Huh.

As soon as Sadie’s Bend passed out of sight, I forgot what it was like to feel safe. Everything seems so alien: the barren landscape, the beastly scary men, and all the dangers the open lands bring. It’s almost like there’s a bubble of plastic separating me from reality, but the wind scrapes my skin, leaving me raw and strangely alive. This new “woman” badge I wear on my neck and between my legs makes me want to duck into a forgotten corner of my mind and hide.

Ice catches me off guard and I slip.
 
A guy I hadn’t noticed before catches my arm, but Axel puts his hand over the other guy’s wrist and gives him a cold stare. The guy raises his hands in surrender and slips to the back of the procession.

Axel transfers that same look to me.

“Hey, I didn’t do anything.”

“No. But he did.”

I shake my head. Clearly I don’t get this whole “mine” thing.

I yelp as my foot sinks deep into what must be a hole beneath the snow. The boots I wear are meant for short walks to the church or visits across town over shoveled sidewalks. They’re meant for that tiny ink-dot on the map of what used to be America. Nothing’s been shoveled here in years, and I keep sinking into the unplowed snow, sometimes knee-deep. This kind of workout is well beyond even what my personal trainer used to dish out. The hike through the snow doesn’t bother me near as much as the men do. I can feel them. They stare at me, undress me with lazy smiles and snide looks. There is no doubt in my mind that if something happened to Axel, it would be very bad news for me.

“He took the pretty one with the great tits,” I hear one of them say. He chuckles. “If I’da known he was going to do that, I woulda porked the shit out of that thirty-year-old with the three kids.”

Axel levels the speaker with what I can only describe as a “you say that again you’re dead” look.

“Sorry, man,” the speaker says. “It’s cool.”

He too falls back. Axel’s icy stare grazes one man, then another. He gets in return a series of nods, downcast eyes, and cleared throats.

They’re thugs, each and every one of them, and they all seem afraid of Axel. My future is in the hands of one scary guy.
 
It’s a good thing, I guess.
 
I mean, it’s just one rapist, right?
 
He’ll hold off the other twenty?
 

It sinks in that my future is as frightening as the bloodied shirt we passed ten minutes back. A woman’s shirt.
 
It didn’t register when I saw it that if it’d been there a while, it would be buried under the snow. Someone died very recently.
 
That’s when the shaking starts, straight from my core all the way into my bones.
 
Who killed her?
 
Who else is out here?

“Didn’t think you owned pants,” Axel says as he helps me over another snowdrift.

I suck in my breath. Axel is strong.
 
One of the strongest men I’ve met.
 
As long as he’s happy with me, no one will find my bloodied clothes on the freshly fallen snow.
 
“You only saw me on Sundays. Church, remember?”

“Ugliest fucking clothes on the planet.” He snorts. “Did they do that to you on purpose?”

My cheeks flush because it’s true. There is absolutely nothing attractive about the clothes I own.

“That’s okay,” he says when I don’t answer. He lifts his chin. “Kept you pure for me.”

I gawk at him. “Seriously?”

“You still sore?” he counters.

My face feels fire-engine red. “They’ll hear you,” I hiss.

Axel’s nostrils actually flare, like it’s occurring to him right now that one of them might be thinking about me. You know, that way.

I edge closer. “What happens if these guys figure out who I was?”

“I’d rather they didn’t.”

“Oh.” I scan the nearby faces for evidence that they hear us and discover a big guy with long blond hair is staring at me. When he catches me looking at him, he smirks. I twist around and focus on my footsteps.

“You don’t get it,” he presses. “There was a country full of men jacking off to your picture from the cover of
TIME Magazine
. You’re for me. No one else. You didn’t answer me.”

“What?” He said jacking off. Like in relation to me. Gross.

He leans in. “Are you sore?”

I glare at him, and once again my face heats.

“You are.” There’s a smile playing about his lips. The guy’s actually proud.

“Hey.” It’s the guy with the long blond hair. “I could swear I know you.”

Sweat stabs me in the pits like a six-pronged fork.

Immediately Axel stops and gets in his face. The guy is actually a little taller than him, but the look on Axel’s face is intimidating. I’d even say murderous.

“You don’t know jack.” Axel enunciates each word.

The other guy doesn’t back down. “I’m just saying I think I’ve seen her before.”

“You’ve never seen her.” Axel bares his teeth. “You will never see her, and you won’t touch her. What part of claimed don’t you understand?”

The way they glare at each other, a fight could break out any second. The blond guy looks mean, but Axel looks like he’s about to rip him in two. I stiffen as they stare each other down. I don’t relax until the blond guy backs away.

This makes me wonder what exactly Axel was in jail for. I mean, did he take on a biker gang and win? Is he one of those guys that flipped out in public one day and shot up a McDonalds? Did Axel knife one of these guys and post his liver on a stake?

Just how violent is he?

I really should ask what he was in jail for. Of course, he could turn mean if I do. Then again, he could be a serial killer. I’d definitely want to know that up front.

I bite my lips. I lick them. I take several deep breaths.

“You—” I clear my throat. “You said you used to, um, you know, with my picture. In your cell.” I’m dying. I’m, like, talking to him about masturbating. While he’s looking at me. “Were you in jail?”

He flicks me a glance and looks away. I swear he grows an inch. “Prison.”

“Why?” My voice shakes only a little. I was so hoping he’d deny it. I sneak a peek at him, but he’s not looking at me. His eyes are hard, icy beads as he stares into the distance.

“Ten to twelve. Armed robbery.”

I let out the breath I’ve been holding. That’s nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. “Oh. Well, nice to see you’ve mended your ways.”

His lips twitch, and it’s the first sign of humor I’ve seen in him. Then he frowns. “The strong survive. The weak die.”

“Is that, like, your mantra or something?”
 
He’s right though. No doubt about that. The entire town of Sadie’s Bend is full of sheep ready for the slaughter. That includes me.

“Do you have any family?” I ask to change the subject.

“No.” Twin slashes appear between his eyes, and he shifts his gaze toward the ground. He stuffs his hands in his pockets.

His tone does not invite further questions. It doesn’t forbid them either, but I get the impression there’s a wound in there somewhere, and I’m not going to stick my nose where it isn’t wanted.

“I probably don’t either. None that survived.”

He appears to give that a think. “Where you from?”

I’m surprised he doesn’t know that already when you consider he’s my number-one masturbatory fan.

“Denver,” I tell him.

I swear for just a second I catch a whiff of sympathy from him. Denver was hit brutally, first with ash, then with all kinds of hardship. Even the FEMA camps collapsed.

Now I’m really depressed.

“So how’d you get to be that hot, sexy bitch?” He actually smiles.

I roll my eyes, and I don’t appreciate the language, but anything’s better than talking about the bad stuff.

“Dad was a lawyer. His firm was national counsel for this big corporation, right? He had to go to New York for a few days. Mom and I had never been there, so she talked him into letting us go, too. You know, he could work and we could go see stuff.”

He spreads his hands. “What’s a few hundred extra bucks in airfare?”

I ignore the sarcasm. “My mom was all about keeping busy. I took piano and dance my whole life, and when I wasn’t doing that, I was cheering or running for class secretary. She had this thing about building my college resume.”

He wags his head mockingly like I’m speaking another language.

“So anyway, Dad heard one of the company’s subsidiaries was putting together a trio of girls, you know, like the Pussycat Dolls, only modern. Mom thought it would be good experience for me to audition.”

“And just like that, they let you sign up.”

I breathe a smile. “Dad was a lawyer for the parent company, so he had an in. I think that’s pretty much how it worked.”

“So you went and they picked you.”

“No, I went and I sat in a room with a hundred stuck-up girls, and it was as boring as being tied to a chair. I sat there for three hours. I’d just talked Mom into letting me leave when they called my name.”

“And then they picked you.”

“Um, kind of. I made it to the final cut, but the whole girl-band idea never went anywhere. They cancelled the project, and we thought that was the end of it. A couple months later they called and said they wanted to do something different. Something like Selena Gomez meets leather and spandex. No Disney, more like pole dancing.”

He stops to gawk at me. “How’d they get your parents to agree?”

This from a felon. “The contract specified that I’d be well guarded at all times. No one would get anywhere near me. Ever.”

He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

“So anyway, it was fun at first.”

“At first? You had to be rocking it.”

I shrug. “Everyone was old. Old to me, anyway. There was no one my age. My first recording, I was fourteen. My first concert, fourteen. How they kept that from
Entertainment Tonight,
I’ll never know.”

“Fourteen? How old are you now?”

“Nineteen.”

“Jesus.”

“How old are you?” I counter.

“Twenty-eight.”

“Dude, you’re really old.” I don’t know where that comes from. Guy’s scary as a horror-movie slasher.

He smirks. This encourages me to keep going. “Back home, all my friends were having fun. Cheering, going on dates, going to parties. Me, I was always working. Cover shoots, rehearsals, fittings, recording sessions, talk shows, public appearances. Did you see any of the stories about me hitting the bars?”

“Most of the time I just looked for the slutty pictures.”

I ignore him. “There’d be a bouncer waiting for us, me and my bodyguards. We’d go in, and I’d go to the bar and get a drink. It’d be real, but I think I got to sip exactly one, once. Anyway, there’d be a guy they’d arranged to have meet me there—an actor, a sports guy, a rocker. Just for the publicity. They’d already leaked where I’d be to the paparazzi. I was supposed to give them whatever they wanted for precisely five minutes and then get out. Axel, everything you think about me, it’s not real. It was all scheduled by a team of PR guys. From the second I got up till the second I went to bed, the entire day was scripted.”