Wilder (4 page)

She welcomed unconsciousness.

She was going to die.

Chapter 4

C
harisma drifted toward consciousness.

The first thing she heard was the sound of water rippling over stones, like a delicate brook down a mountain slope. She heard birds tweeting, too, and realized she was warm and comfortable, snuggled into her bed listening to her sound machine.

She usually set the machine to play the ocean shore, not the babbling brook, but this was nice. Relaxing. Soothing. Although some memory niggled at the corner of her mind. . . .

Then she moved.

Wrong!

Every joint ached and burned.

Instinctively, she reached for the bracelet on her wrist.

It was there, her crystals strung on a wire and held close against her skin. The stones whispered a faint reassurance, so faint she could scarcely hear it, but even so . . . she knew she was safe.

She opened her eyes to darkness. Total darkness.

Her night-light had burned out.

She moved again. And groaned. What had she done to herself this time? She couldn’t quite remember. . . .

Then, in a rush, she did.

Lost. Hurt. Attacked. Saved by . . .
something
.

Where was she?

It wasn’t just dark.

She couldn’t see.

She couldn’t see!

She sat straight up, groped for her eyes. She was blindfolded!

From the side, she heard someone move. Her wrists were caught and held. “Don’t.” A man’s voice, deep, rough, and scratchy. “Your eyes were injured in the blast.”

Blind. She was blind.
And imprisoned.

Panicked, she struggled.

“Don’t,” he said again. “You’ll hurt yourself. The doctor said to leave the bandages on as long as possible.”

“The doctor?” Her mouth was dry. Her voice was shrill. “What doctor? Who are you?”

“Dr. King. He saved your life.”

This guy didn’t tell her who
he
was. Like she wouldn’t notice
that
. “I’m not stupid, you know. I remember what happened. I fell down the stairs. I broke my collarbone.” Although it felt better. For a new break, surprisingly better. “So
what
are you claiming could have killed me?”

The voice didn’t answer.

She started to struggle again.

He shook her wrists. “Do you remember the bite?”

She froze.

The demon. The bite.

“Yes.” On her shoulder. The cold had radiated down her arms, her legs.

“Some of the demons are venomous. That one was, and the venom worked on you. By the time I got you here, you were delirious, with a high fever. I sent my people to find Dr. King, but he’s busy. He came as soon as he could—”

”You have a specialist who makes house calls?” She poured scorn into every syllable.

“He knows I can’t come to him. And he works down here a lot.”

“So I’m still below the city?”

“About three levels under Central Park.”

“Why so far down? Why Central Park?”

“I’m safe here. And I like Central Park.” The man sounded almost whimsical. As if he didn’t get much company and was enjoying her visit.

“Safe from what? Who are you?”

He sighed. He loosened his grip. “If I let you go, will you listen to the story before you tear off the bandage?”

“Yes.” Because his hands like manacles around her wrists made her panic even more.

Cautiously he released her.

She could feel him hovering, waiting to make a grab if she made the wrong move.

“Water,” he said, and put a bottle in her hands.

She should sniff the contents. She should make sure this wasn’t drugged. But she was so thirsty, she couldn’t wait. Lifting the bottle, she drank, and drank, and when he pried the bottle away, she fought him.

He won, of course, for she was abominably weak. “Stop! You’ve been on an IV. Your stomach’s not ready to be inundated!”

She lowered her hands to her sides, gripped the blanket that covered her legs, and realized—“I need to go to the bathroom.” She wished she didn’t. She couldn’t imagine where she was, what kind of primitive facilities there were, whether he was a leering pervert who would watch her . . . or whether he was a demon who faked being human to trick her into revealing secrets of the Chosen Ones.

Why else would he blindfold her except to conceal his disgusting, eerie, reptilian face?

She heard a rustle of material. His voice came from close beside her, at almost the same level as her head. “I’m going to help you get up.” He put his hands under her arms and lifted her to her feet.

And she realized she’d been resting on the ground.

As if he knew what she was thinking, he said, “You were delirious, dying. You kept flinging yourself off the bed onto the floor and burrowing into the dirt.”

Her mind seized on the oddest detail. “Your floor is dirt?”

“You’re in a cave, okay?” He guided her with his hand under her arm. “Finally I realized you were special. Different. You get your strength from the earth, and you needed the earth to heal.”

Kudos to this guy for figuring it out.

The voice continued. “So we put you on the ground and covered you with blankets, and you got better. It was a close thing.”

“I feel a little achy now. That’s all.” She rotated her shoulder. “Even my collarbone is better.”

“That’s because you’ve been unconscious for eleven days.”

“What?” She jerked her head toward him as if she could see him.

“Eleven days,” he repeated. Taking her wrist in his grip, he placed her hand on a doorframe. “Here’s the bathroom. I took out the lightbulb. You’ll have to grope around, but it’s small, with a sink and commode. There’s a lock on the door. You’ll be okay.”

“Why would you take out the lightbulb?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because you seem to be the kind of person who doubts me when I say your eyes are injured and would hit the switch to prove me wrong.”

“Sarcasm.” She rather appreciated that. Made him seem more human.

Not that she’d ever had a conversation with a demon, but she didn’t think they had the wit or intelligence for sarcasm.

As promised, the room was blessedly tiny, the door had a lock, and she didn’t need her sight to do what she needed to do. She washed her hands at the sink—by the shape and heft of the fixtures, she would guess they dated from early twentieth century—and stood there, trying to understand her situation, to figure out what to do next.

She was dressed in a long, voluminous, sturdy cotton nightgown that smelled like dirt and age, and covered her from her neck to her toes.

Was that creature telling the truth? About anything?

One thing he’d said that she knew was true: She was underground. She could tell by the sense of still earth around her, from the way sound hung in the air, then slowly faded. For her, the earth was the womb from which she was birthed—and the tomb where she would die.

But . . . had the demon’s venom truly been so strong it almost killed her? Had she been down here eleven days? Add the days she’d been lost in the tunnels, and she knew the other Chosen were frantic, uncertain whether to say a prayer for her soul or continue their hunt for her. And they didn’t have any moments to spare on hunting for her—the Chosen Ones were the last line of defense against hell’s increasingly strong assault on the world. And they were almost out of time.

Only weeks remained before darkness covered the earth and hell reigned for a thousand years.

Her heart pounded. She desperately needed to go back up into the city as soon as possible, yet . . . yet she could feel a weariness tugging at her senses, a faint chill and numbness remained in her fingertips, and if her sight was truly affected, how could she escape?

In an abrupt fury, she reached up and tore off the blindfold.

Oh. Oh!
She blinked. She could see light around the door. A dim light, but still—a light.

After a moment of staring, fireworks began exploding along her optical nerve and she had to turn her head away.

So she wasn’t blind. But she did have visual problems, and when she remembered the demons and the utter darkness, and then that radiant explosion . . . how could she be surprised?

A light tap on the door, and the creature called, “Charisma, are you all right?”

She tied the blindfold on again, unlocked the door, and yanked it open. “I’m fine.”

“I see.” He readjusted her blindfold, his hands careful not to touch her skin. “Are you satisfied now? You took it off. Dr. King will not be pleased.”

“I had to know.”

“And?”

“I could see.”

He took a long breath, which she could read as either disappointment or relief. Then, taking her arm, he walked her across the room . . . she guessed. “We honestly didn’t know, so that’s a good sign.”

“You say I’ve been here for eleven days, and since my collarbone is feeling pretty good, I tend to believe you.”

“Why, thank you.”

More sarcasm. She would have to be careful. She might begin to like him.

“Here’s a chair.” He put her hand on it. “If you can, we’d like you to try some broth. Can you do that?”

She smiled toothily. “I can always eat.” Although she wasn’t particularly hungry, and that was a bad sign. Usually when she woke after an injury, she was ravenous. So when the scent of chicken broth wafted past, she seated herself, found the mug he placed in front of her, and drank little sips. It was salty and rich, not tainted with the bitter taste of drugs or poison, and, possibly even more miraculous . . . not from a can. “My compliments to the chef,” she said.

The scrape of a chair, and his voice was close and to her right. “I keep the Belows safe, and in return they bring me food.”

She remembered taking food from Irving’s kitchen at the Chosen Ones’ headquarters and passing it out to the street people, and remembered, too, that some of them carefully stowed it away.
For the Guardian,
they whispered.

That made her frown. “You’ve got a racket going.”

“I suppose you could say that. But I actually do keep them safe.” His voice grew sober. “I never ask for anything in return. They bring the food because I need it, and because they want to pay me as best they can. They have their pride, you know.”

“Okay.” That made sense.

And she was finished with the broth. She groped, found a table before her, put down the mug. He helped her to her feet, and she followed where he led. “In all this time, why haven’t my eyes healed?”

“That particular demon’s venom is primarily a neurotoxin, although Dr. King thinks he delivered a load of harmful bacteria, too. The neurotoxin attacked your nervous system—you suffered vertigo, convulsions, pain, and you were panicked because you couldn’t see. Dr. King thinks the shock of the flash to your eyes, combined with the venom, injured your optic nerve, and if we let it rest . . . Here’s your bed.”

Her legs wobbled as he lowered her to sit on her pallet.

The broth should have revived her, and maybe it did. But she was still weak, her head swimming.

Beside her, the creature steadied her with a touch and waited, maybe in concern . . . or maybe because he anticipated the pleasure of tearing out her throat.

She wasn’t afraid. She had always known she would die down here, and for right now . . . she had to know whether this man, this thing, would murder her. . . .

So she attacked.

Chapter 5

C
harisma lunged toward the voice, shoved at the creature.

He toppled with a hard thump.

She landed on top of him. Kneed him in the groin.

He gasped in pain.

She lunged for his throat.

But he was very tall.

And she was blind.

She missed his throat, caught a handful of the cloth at his chest, gripped it, and clambered up him, planting her feet and knees hard into his belly and his chest. She lunged for his face.

He caught her wrist.

She still had one free hand, and she knew how to kill. She was ready to take him out, but . . . he was warm.

She hadn’t expected that. She had really thought he was a demon, cold-blooded, pretending to care about her, presenting an illusion of humanity to lure her into some foolish revelation about her friends and her mission.

Instead he was a . . . well, she still didn’t know what he was. But sitting on top of him, she remembered how he had come to her rescue, and her fight instinct cooled. He breathed in and out, his massive chest rising and falling. His heart hammered beneath the knee she had planted on his breastbone. Beneath the loose clothing he wore, his body parts appeared to be in approximately the right places, so he was . . . a mammal?

Probably some form of humanoid, a species that was perhaps not an enemy, and she was trained not to kill on anything less than a certainty, or in self-defense.

He, inconveniently, didn’t try to beat her unconscious or slice her to pieces. Instead he remained motionless, and after a moment of indecision, she swept her hand across his chest.

It was heavy with ribs and muscles, and abruptly tapered to a thin waist and hips. His cotton tunic left his huge upper arms and shoulders free to move. And they really were huge, abnormally so. The arm felt human, with muscles and an elbow and more muscles and a wrist . . . but coarse hair about an inch long covered the skin. His coat felt like that stray German shepherd that appeared whenever she bought a meatball sandwich at Luigi’s Roach Coach.

This guy was not formed right. “Lift a lot of weights?” she asked.

“Yes. And I indulge in an unwise use of Rogaine, too.”

She half laughed, because it was the polite thing to do when someone joked in the face of . . . of being so very, very different. Her heartbeat began to calm.

Maybe everything about him was the truth. Maybe he was merely one of the unfortunates who lived beneath the city because above, they would be the objects of horror and mockery.

Beneath the rough weave of the tunic, she felt the heat of his skin, and over that, more of that coarse, long, thick hair. A ruff of hair—of fur—circled his throat.

He didn’t wear a collar. He didn’t smell like a dog. He didn’t smell like flea shampoo. He smelled like a man who used Dove, probably in its liquid form, and rinsed in rainwater.

She hesitated, her fingertips hovering over the top of his jaw.

“Go ahead,” he said, his voice rougher than before. “It’s a little late for you to worry about intruding on my personal space.”

She nodded. “Truth.”

With the flat of her hand, she stroked his cheek, then his temple. The hair here grew back toward his ears, like a man’s beard, but smooth. And softer than the hair on his arms.

Up the center of his face, from the point of his chin to his forehead, his features were shaped like a man’s—and covered with fine, short hair like the coat on a dog’s face. Except for his lips. They were smooth, soft, sculpted in the same shape as
human lips.

He was definitely the guy who had saved her ass. She remembered the outline she’d seen when that light blasted her eyesight away. “Why didn’t the light hurt your eyes?”

“Since I set off the bomb, I knew enough to close them.”

“Makes sense. Are you a werewolf?” She was joking. Since Aleksandr, one of her fellow Chosen Ones, had disappeared, the Wilder family had visited the Chosen Ones more than once: Aleksandr’s parents, Firebird and Douglas, along with his grandparents, Konstantine and Zorana.

Konstantine had raised a family of shape-shifters, and had a great deal of knowledge of the creatures that populated the night. He had snorted when Charisma asked about werewolves and vampires and ghosts.

She believed him, too.

But this creature beneath her gave a sigh. “Maybe.”

She gave a quavering laugh and slid her hands into his long hair. The ends swept his shoulders, and the strands felt clean and glossy to the touch. But when she allowed her fingers to delve into his hair and touch his scalp, she gasped, and he flinched away.

The skin there covered . . . something. Something weird. Harder than bone. With a seam.

“Who are you?” she breathed. “What happened to you?”

He took her hands and held them, not to imprison her as he had before, but as if he wanted comfort for himself. “They call me
Guardian
.”

Her heart picked up the beat again. “What do you mean, they call you
Guardian
?
Who calls you that? Is it your name?”

“The Belows call me that. The people who live down here. So I guess it’s my name.” He shrugged, a massive roll of his shoulders that for her seemed like a roller coaster. “Say, could you do me a favor?”

“Maybe.”

“Could you get your knees out of my stomach?”

“Sure.” Hastily she slid off him and settled on the ground, sitting on her heels. “Could you do me a favor?”

“Maybe.”

“Tell me how you got the name.”

He took a breath, and another, then said, “When I first got down here, I was, um, sick. Out of my mind. Wounded. Terrified, like an abused wolf cub. Moises found me and he coaxed me into this cave with a trail of bread crumbs.”

“Literally?”

“Pretty much. I was starving. Moises told Amber about me. Taurean overheard.”

“These are all Belows?”

“Sometimes they go above. But yes. They are my . . . staff, I guess you’d say. My friends. I trust them.”

“It’s good to have friends.” Charisma missed her friends. Missed them terribly.

“Taurean announced to the Belows that a guardian had arrived.” Reflectively, he said, “I vaguely remember the clamor that resulted.”

“So
Guardian
is like a title.”

“Yes. And a legend.”

“A legend.” She clutched his hands tightly.

He gave her a light squeeze back. “Does that mean something to you?”

It did mean something.
She
was a legend, or part of one, and in these uncertain days, she knew never to discount a good legend. “I’m Charisma Fangorn.”

“I know. In your delirium, you told me.”

What else had she told him? Uneasily, she said, “Tell me all about
your
legend.”

“The Belows believe that in times of trouble, someone comes to them—apparently, it’s always serendipity—and he protects them from the dangers down here. In normal times, it’s all about the Aboves who are creepy enough to come down and scrounge for slaves, or the serial killers who prey on the disadvantaged, or the rich boys who come down to get their fill of rape and pillage. These days, of course, it’s all of those, plus the demons.”

As he spoke, Charisma slid her crystal bracelet up and down her arm, trying to coax the stones into speaking to her. Who was he? What was he? Was he really a legend, and did he have a part to play in the fate of the Chosen Ones?

The stones were silent, their magic exhausted . . . or perhaps it was that her magic had abandoned her. “So you fulfill the duties as Guardian? And you took that as your name?”

“I don’t remember my real name. I had some kind of surgery on my brain.” His voice grew strained and scratchy. “I’m not right in the head.”

“Oh. That explains your, um, skull.” He was crazy. That was what he was saying. He was crazy.

Not that she hadn’t met a lot of crazy people, and conducted business with them, too. About half the street people and ninety percent of the people who lived in the tunnels should be on meds and weren’t, and Charisma thanked them when they brought her reports of weird creatures and demon attacks that no one else believed.

Although . . . although perfectly respectable people were starting to report such oddities, and they hated when the police doubted
their
sanity.

The trouble was, of course, that Osgood owned the city, and the police department, and Osgood did not want those reports circulated. He wanted the populace quiet and docile . . . until the seven years were up. Until it was too late.

So respectable citizens kept quiet when they saw scary things, and Charisma listened to the street people and never feared them.

But then, she’d never been blindfolded and trapped underground by one before.

But he seemed to get it. “I’m not violent or anything. As far as I remember. I can’t recall much before I was down here.”

“You have amnesia.”

“That’s what Dr. King tells me. He says my mind will release the past when it has healed from its trauma.”

“Amnesia isn’t so bad.” Really. She hoped.

“I suppose not, although I do hope I don’t remember
I’m
a serial killer.”

“Oh, me too.” Except . . . “Why did they operate on your brain? Whoever they are?”

“They told me they would make me what I was meant to be.” His voice changed, grew deeper, with a growl that sounded ugly and hostile.

And it seemed death hovered close in the heated air.

Yet Charisma had never learned to shut her mouth. “What were you meant to be?”

He yanked his hands away from her grip. He sat up, towering over her. “A monster. A beast. A fiend. A twisted horror worthy of nothing but disgust and terror.”

Never had she felt so inadequate. He had saved her from certain death, and now his pain was palpable, yet she had no way to help him. “You’re not so bad.”

“You haven’t seen me!” His voice stripped away any illusion she harbored that he wasn’t dangerous. He sounded . . . angry, a creature on the razor’s edge of violence.

“No. I haven’t seen you.” She edged back, wondering whether to rip off her blindfold and
run
.

But slowly he brought his rasping breath under control. “I saved you, Charisma Fangorn. I nursed you. I’m invested in you. I won’t hurt you now.”

“Reassuring.” Not really. Sounded stalkerish. Perhaps it would be better if she attacked again, knocked him out, and made her escape. If only . . . if only she hadn’t wasted her strength on her first ineffective attack. If only she weren’t so exhausted . . .

“You’re drooping.” Taking her arms, he pressed them to her sides, lifted her to her feet, picked her up, and placed her on her bed on the floor. “Go to sleep.”

Alarmed or not, she was almost asleep now.

“When you wake up again,” he said, “you can take a shower.”

“A shower.” The faintest spark made her straighten.

“You’ve been burrowing into the ground for eleven days.”

“I’m dirty.” She touched one hand to her chest and felt the crust of filth there. “A shower . . .”

But when she thought about the effort to wash herself, she realized he was right. She was finished. She was . . . exhausted.

She slithered backward onto the pillow.

He caught her by the shoulders and eased her flat onto her back.

And she was asleep.