The Immortal Game (book 1) (7 page)

Her hands were sweaty against the refrigerator handle. She turned and grabbed the sole beer from the door, glad that she actually had one. She opened the bottle and handed it to him.

The TV room was connected to the kitchen on the far end, completing the downstairs of the house in a small loop. “We can wait for our food in here,” she said as she walked through and sat on the brown leather couch. She rubbed gently at the blister that had formed on her thumb from rock climbing.

Ash sat too, not right next to her, but close.

Her eyes darted around the room, unsure of what to do in her own house. She stood again and went to the line of CDs on the wall-sized entertainment center across the room. She had grown up listening to her father’s favorites: big band music and old bluesy jazz. She spoke without turning. “What do you like to listen to?”

“Surprise me,” he said from right behind her.

Her eyes shot up to a small stone statue her father had brought back from a trip.

Ash rested his hand on her hip. She chose a CD without looking at it and turned around to put it in the player.

She expected him to step back.

He didn’t.

She found herself facing his blue Henley, inches from her. The top buttons were open and she could see the steady beat of his pulse at the base of his neck. He smelled of ozone and sweat, not unpleasant, but masculine, with something clean and subtle beneath that. She looked up at his face which was shockingly coming down toward hers.

His soft, warm lips brushed hers and his hot breath sent a chill across her skin. She gasped and saw him smile at the sound. When he pressed his lips into hers the energy she felt between them was there, mixed with a deep stirring of desire.

His lips parted and his tongue grazed hers in an electrifying rush. He brought his hand up to touch her hair and the back of her head and he pulled her in gently for a deeper kiss.

Her hands came up to his sides. She felt his heat through the fabric of his shirt and the well-defined muscles beneath. She moved closer and pressed into him, her breast against his hard chest.

His free arm wound around her waist and pulled her even closer, their stomachs flat against one another’s. Her shirt came up slightly. She felt his bare fingers on her skin.

Her eyes snapped open. She pulled away. “What are you doing?” she breathed.

He followed her and kissed her again, as if he hadn’t heard.

“Wait,” she said.

He stopped then. His eyes were a soft blue, not bright and intense like on the bridge or at the rock, but shaded and deep.

She looked away. She wanted this. Why was she stopping?

“I need you,” he whispered and followed her movements. He tried to kiss her again but she turned her head.

She looked at his arms, wrapped around her, then to his face. She shook her head. She couldn’t let him distract her. She had already wasted two days with him and she was only getting further behind.

She caught their reflection in the large plate glass window to her left. She saw how ridiculous they were. It wasn’t that she was ugly. She was
cute.
That’s what people said. But she wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t the type to be seen with a guy like Ash.

She realized then that he probably took all the girls bungee jumping and rock climbing. He probably always ordered strange things off foreign menus. She was sure he kissed them all like this, and stared into their eyes the way he was looking at her now. He probably told them all that he “needed them.”

His arms were slack around her. He seemed to be waiting for her to come to her senses and kiss him again. She was pretty sure he wasn’t used to women rejecting him.

Her mind went back to the picture of her dad in the staircase, the one taken on the battlefield with helicopter blades and a war swirling around him. She might have done well on today’s chemistry exam but she would definitely fail the next one if she didn’t start to focus.

She pulled away. “I can’t.”

He stepped in, closing the gap, and looked into her eyes. Whatever he saw there made him kiss her again, a tender kiss that pulled a soft sound from deep inside her. The excitement of their energy flowed through her. She fought the deep stirring in her body that ached for her to kiss him back.

“I can’t,” she said, louder, breaking contact.

He searched her eyes. “Don’t you feel it?”

She glanced away from him, to the line of CDs. “Feel what?” But she knew.

He looked at her for a long time. “You don’t—”

She cut him off. “I think you should leave.”

He winced and she felt something massive and hollow fill her chest. He took her hands in his.

She tried to fight the energy that came from him.

He looked down at her hands and stroked her fingers, soothing the tender blisters and sending shivers through her. He pressed her palm flat against the middle of his chest and covered his hand with hers. His dark ring pressed into her skin on the back of her hand.

“You don’t feel
that
?” he asked. His eyes locked with hers.

A sound tried to escape her when she felt the calm of him intensify—and beneath that his steady heartbeat—but she kept it in check.

“I don’t feel anything,” she lied.

A look of confusion passed over his features, but it was gone in an instant. He dropped her hand and moved past her. He strode out the front door, almost running over the delivery guy from the Thai restaurant.

…

The number thirty-seven turned out to be a whole fish, with the head still attached, in what looked like chili sauce. Ruby put it in the refrigerator with the Pad Thai and spring rolls. Her appetite had left with Ash.

She took the picture of her dad, the one from the stairway, and propped it up against a pile of books next to her notes at the kitchen table. She looked to the picture often, but she still had a hard time focusing.

As she lay in bed that night, she touched her lips with the tips of her fingers and tried to remember the feel of Ash’s lips there; the warmth, the pressure, the taste.

He “needed” her. That’s what he had said.

She rolled over and pulled the covers over her head. It took a long time for sleep to find her. When it did she dreamed of falling, and falling, and falling, and then being caught by the bungee cord at her feet and thrown back up into the air. When Ash pulled her back to earth, he kissed her and she felt like she was falling again, but this time her feet were on the ground.

In the dream, the sun on her skin was warm and Ash’s arms were strong around her. He tightened his grip and she laughed, but the embrace soon became too much, too tight, crushing. She pulled her head back to look at him. He smiled but the grin was too large and his eyes were the wrong blue. She tried to get away but he gripped her tighter, pulling her against his body.

Then it was Langston holding her, his features impossibly sharp, sharper than any human’s. His teeth were jagged points. His breath was hot and fetid on her skin. She pushed on his chest, desperate to get away, but he held her tight. His eyes widened and he grinned at her fear.

“Ruby,” he whispered. “Do not veer from your dreams. Ash is a perilous man.”

She stopped struggling, “No. Ash is—”

“Death and destruction,” the Langston monster hissed. “He will ruin us all.”

His smile faded and she was glad that his lips now covered most of those sharp yellow teeth. His face melted away and became a tangle of snakes pouring out at her. She felt their dry scaly skin and their muscles undulating beneath.

She tried to scream, but Langston held her too tight for her to get a breath. She beat at his arms. Each was a snake around her waist.

She woke with a start and tore at the sheets twisted around her. She was breathing hard.

The dream faded. She tried to hold on to it: Langston crushing the breath out of her and telling her Ash was dangerous—
perilous
—but it was like trying to hold water in cupped hands and the dreamed slipped out of her grasp. Soon it was gone and she was left with the fear without the how or why of it.

Then she heard the knocking.

Her already-racing heart sped. The sound was distant, from somewhere downstairs. She sat still and listened. The light of the streetlamp outside her window came in through the gaps in her curtains.

Thud, thud … thud.

It sounded like someone was dropping something heavy. There was no rhythm to it. She got out of bed and walked to the top of the stairs. She peered down the long flight and waited.

Thud … Thud … Thud.

She went down a few steps.

Thud, thud.

Someone was out there knocking something against the front door. She plucked up her courage and hurried down the stairs. She looked through the peephole but saw only blackness. Had the streetlight gone out? To her right she saw that light still streamed in through the front window.

Thud. Thud.

Her head jerked back as the door shook from whatever was banging on the other side. She looked through the peephole again. The blackness had texture to it. It wasn’t that the street was dark; there was something in the way, something black, and—

She sucked in a breath. She grasped the door handle with her left hand, and placed her right on the bolt lock ready to turn it. She looked through the peephole again.

“Hello?” She said more softly than she intended. The blackness on the other side of the door moved. She heard a quiet moan.

She swallowed, turned the deadbolt, and swung the door wide.

Ash’s body crashed to the floor without the door to lean on.

She seized at the sight of him lying there. Facedown on the hardwood floor. Covered in blood.

SIX

When Ruby’s body remembered how to work, she fell to her knees and hovered over him. “Ash,” she started, tentative, and began to roll him over. He moaned. Her father said to never move a patient until you’ve assessed their injuries.

She scanned his back and legs in the dim light from the streetlamp. There were no cuts. Nothing was obviously broken. There was just the blood. She had to roll him over. What would she tell 911 if she didn’t know what was wrong?

She pulled again, on his far shoulder, and tried to roll him toward her, but he was heavier than she imagined. “Ash,” she whispered, “can you hear me?”

Another small moan escaped him, but no more.

She gripped his shoulder, this time from a wider stance above him and with better leverage. When he began to roll she got her first glimpse of the wound and dropped him in surprise. He made no sound. That, combined with the red raggedness of what she glimpsed, made her wonder if he was already dead. She sucked up her fear, bent again and pulled him over in one tremendous movement, grunting with the effort.

When he was flat on his back she crouched over him. She could see deep inside his body: maroon muscle, bright red blood, and something pink and spongy too. White jagged bones. Ribs, she realized, stood out in contrast, broken and splintered. She looked away, her stomach roiling from the metallic smell of blood, but something caught her eye. In the middle of the train wreck of his chest she saw something small, black, and hard looking. Metal?

She began to shake.

Ash was going to die.

Her hand came up to her mouth. It too was covered in blood. She lost the tentative grip on her senses and propelled herself backward, socks slipping on the wooden floor, until her back rested against the wainscoting.

She watched his chest rise and fall and with it was a low gurgling noise. His breathing was shallow and uneven. He was alive. But for how long? Would he die right now? Right here? In the front room?

She clambered to her feet and ran to the kitchen. She grabbed the yellow phone from its cradle. The receiver shook in her trembling hands as she placed it next to her ear. But there was nothing. The phone exchanges! The bombing! She dropped the phone and let it swing from its curly cord.

Her messenger bag was on the table. She threw the top flap open and rummaged through it with bloody hands. She seized on her cell phone and whispered, “Please.” But all she saw was the all too familiar notice:
No Service.

A sharp cry escaped her. She clamped her mouth shut and thought of her father. What would he do? The metal piece was deep inside Ash’s chest. Should she try to remove it? Her father had told her stories, but she was no doctor, and she had no tools.

She went back to him and sat by his head. His face, the face that so often crept into her thoughts, was now streaked with blood. There was a long cut on his check. The blood there had dried. It was an older wound, probably by a couple of days.

Her eyes snapped wide.

It hadn’t been there before. It hadn’t been there when he left, when she
made him leave
, a few hours ago. This cut was new.

Flashes of memory ran through her mind; the long gash on the back of his hand, the black eye with the cut eyebrow. He healed too quickly.

And then she knew.

The cut on his face wasn’t days old. Only hours. A tingle traveled across her scalp and down into her shoulders. Her eyes went to the wound in his chest. Could he heal from that too? No, she didn’t think so. No one could recover from that, not without surgery. It would kill him, and probably soon.

She tried not to breathe in the heavy smell of Ash’s blood as she looked inside him again, at the metal there. Her head pulled back in surprise. The metal moved. Not with the rhythm of his breath, up and down and irregular, but closer to her. She could see more of it now, not much, but a little. Part of it seemed peeled, like a banana. A bullet? She looked to Ash’s face again.

His eye twitched and then his lip. “Ruby,” he said, a labored pant. Her ears pricked at the first word he had said, her name. He was breathless, and there was that odd gurgling noise. With an effort he added, “Close—the—door.”

“What—”

“Close it,” he said with more force than she thought could come from his wrecked body.

She looked back outside. The light reflected off the dark empty street. Her thoughts were frozen between reason, she should run for help, and her acute awareness that he was asking something important of her. Would he be in trouble somehow if she got help?