“Jeremiah!” Lorelei screamed as the man in front of me crashed back into the cargo area.
Her panic was enough to make me hesitate, bringing me within a hair’s breath of doom. The man behind the felled robber took his shot as I swung to the side, and the bullet ran a blazing trail across my rip cage. Letting the momentum of my swing carry me, I snapped man’s wrist before he could pull the hammer back again, then pulled his body over my shoulder and slammed it downward until his dead weight pummeled the struggling man on the ground. Between the two downed men, only one of them was able to get a good punch in as I wailed on them until they stopped moving.
I was lost, a Berserker, a Bringer-Of-Death on the edge of sanity with the lust of the kill.
“Jeremiah,” Lorelei whispered, as a chilling chuckle gurgled forth from the maimed throat of the man on the ground beneath her.
Time stopped. She stood with amber eyes only for me as he lay on his back with my pistol pointed at her head. He watched me with a wicked and bloody smile as his finger squeezed against the trigger.
“No!” I yelled.
And then, Kristina was there. From her own seat she held her intricate little Derringer. The one the men hadn’t thought to look for. The one hidden where no one would find it. Her face held such intensity as she pulled that trigger and blasted her one-shot through his head. His laughter stopped and the gun clattered to the floor.
Luke was crouched with an inhuman light in his eyes. He’d been shot if the blood pooling beneath him was any clue.
“Make sure,” he said in a raspy voice. I took a pistol from the limp hand of one of the outlaws and emptied bullets into their heads for good measure. We didn’t need anyone else coming back from the dead. Luke did the same up front and when we were certain none would hurt any one of these frightened people huddled together on this derailed train, then I gave into my need to see Lorelei safe.
She was huddled into herself in our seat with a wide and vacant look in her eyes. They were rimmed with unshed tears and she rocked gently.
“Jeremiah Cade, you’re a mess,” she said in a strange tone. She pulled a white handkerchief from her pocket and started wiping smears of red from my face. It wasn’t even my blood.
“Are you all right?” I whispered.
She didn’t flinch from my touch as I stroked her face and hair. I couldn’t have kept my hands from her if I tried. Her frightened eyes landed on the body beside me.
“I’ll get them out of here, okay?” I murmured.
Luke’s face was buried in Kristina’s neck and she rocked him slowly.
“We need to move these bodies,” I said. “They can’t stay in here with all these good people.”
Kristina shook her head. “No, Jeremiah. You need to move these bodies. Your brother needs a minute.” Her eyes were wide and steady. She was hiding what he was from the bustle of everyone around us. He was injured and on the verge of a change and dragging around bodies wasn’t going to keep him human.
I wasn’t much better off, but my injury wasn’t so bad and I still had some semblance of control. I pulled my hat farther down over my eyes and grabbed the legs of two of the train robbers. When the bodies were piled up near the blast site in the rails, I peeked my head into the engine car up front to find the three workers there all shot through. Damn those wicked men for shooting unarmed rail workers and robbing women and children. How far did a man have to fall to lack any trace of honor?
The dark tendrils of evening stretched across the clearing and I gave the tree line a quick look over to make sure there weren’t stragglers waiting to take their revenge in the night.
The woman with the baby squeezed my forearm when I returned. “Thank you for what you and your brother done, sir. That was mighty brave of the both of you.”
I gave her a tired smile. My body was a writhing ember and it was all I could muster. I locked my arms against two seat backs and lifted my voice. “We aren’t due in St. Louis for some time yet, but they’ll figure out something’s happened when we don’t show up. We aren’t close enough to any towns to walk and it would be too dangerous in the dark anyway. We have no choice but to stay here overnight and wait for help. I recon they’ll get to us by mid-day tomorrow.”
“What if more of those men come back in the night?” a quite woman in a cream colored dress asked.
“I already checked around and it looks like these men were the entirety of their outfit. Just to be sure though, my brother and I will camp outside tonight to keep an eye out for any mischief. I’m sorry for what you folks have been through and I wish it hadn’t happened, but we can’t change what is. We just have to wait out the storm and move on when help arrives.” I made my way back to Lorelei through the chaos of the small, frightened mass.
“I’m coming with you,” she whispered.
“You’ll be more comfortable in here,” I argued.
“But I’ll be safer with you.”
Well, that was to be determined. If she came outside this train tonight, I wouldn’t be changing into a wolf like I so desperately needed but the pleading desperation in her eyes made me not care so much about the pain. I didn’t like the idea of not having her with me either.
I sighed. “You.” I pointed to the man in the top hat.
“Blake Parker,” he said.
“Mr. Parker, would you be so kind as to get these people some dinner from the car in front? Blankets too if you can find any.”
He left immediately and I pulled Lorelei behind me. “We’ll be camped just inside the tree line. Holler if anyone needs anything and we’ll hear you,” I said before leaving the car.
Luke and Kristina followed closely behind us, dragging her bag. Inside of the protective arms of the forest, I sat heavily on a boulder.
“You’re hurt,” Lorelei said.
The fire across my ribcage was nothing compared to the burning in my marrow. “I’ll live.”
Luke nodded his head toward the woods. “There’s a creek runnin’ about fifty yards that way. We could use some water.”
“Come on, Lorelei,” Kristina said as she pulled a canteen out of her bag.
“Is it safe?” she asked.
“Got my Derringer,” she clipped. She took Lorelei’s hand and pulled her into the woods.
“How bad is it?” I asked Luke gruffly.
He pulled his jacket aside to show an impressive dark stain soaking the shoulder of his shirt. “I’ll live,” he said with a wry smile.
Chapter Eleven
Lorelei
It was difficult to appreciate the cold beauty of the woods because most of me was consumed with thoughts bathed in the violence of the robbery. I’d never in my life witnessed something so horridly brutal.
“Where did Jeremiah and Luke learn to kill like that?” I whispered to Kristina. She walked just ahead of me in the direction Luke pointed us.
“Some men are born with an instinct for it.” She pulled the branches of a shrub back for me to pass through. “The difference between our men and those train robbers is that Luke and Jeremiah have a conscious reservation about such things. Don’t mistake them killing for us as evil. They saved us and every other innocent on that train, and neither one of them thought about the bodily risk to themselves.”
“I’m grateful. It’s just I’ve never seen a more lethal man than the one I’m married to.”
“Worried, are you? Well, you never have to worry about him turnin’ that violence on you. Jeremiah’s a good man. I mean, right down to his core good. He only kills when he has to and part of that is a product of the times, of our situations, of the land we live on. You want a man like Jeremiah to be protectin’ you, Ms. Trust me when I say, you don’t want a man hesitating to keep you safe.
The bile I’d been holding down ever since I watched all of those men die revolted on me. Doubled over, I wretched over and over again. A warm hand rubbed my back as Kristina crooned nonsensical things until my stomach had emptied itself completely.
“I forget you’re used to tender living sometimes,” Kristina murmured.
I pressed the back of my hands to my lips. “Don’t tell him.”
“He won’t see it as weak.”
“Please.”
The blue in her eyes swam with understanding. “I won’t. Come on. The creek is just through there. I think I can hear it.”
The creek was wide and carried chunks of ice down the currents. She filled the canteen while I rested my quaking knees on the pebble beach. She squatted there a long time by the babbling water before she turned to me again. “We almost died just now, didn’t we?” Her cheeks were rosy in the cold wind and the blond hair that had escaped her braid whipped around her face.
I took a long, shaky drag of air and nodded. “Thanks for shooting that horrible man,” I said. The image of his laughing, filthy face with blood gurgling freely from his throat as he aimed that pistol at me would haunt my dreams. Kristina had stood for me though. She and those Dawson boys had changed my fate.
“Don’t mention it,” she said in a shaky voice. Maybe pulling the trigger would haunt her dreams, too.
The canteen sloshed with a satisfying sound as she handed it to me, and I took a healthy swig. I poured the frosty water into my hand and splashed myself in the face. I had to get a grip. Jeremiah was hurt, and even if he thought he was fine, his wound needed tending. I refilled the canteen and followed Kristina out of the quiet of the woods. By the time we arrived back, Jeremiah had a sizable pile of wood stacked and was starting a fire with a small mound of shavings and two pieces of flint. Why was I not surprised that he brought fire making materials with him wherever he went?
Kristina didn’t ask permission. She pulled at the buttons on Luke’s shirt until the oozing wound on his shoulder was exposed. “It went clear through you,” she said, prodding the other side.
She didn’t have to ask, but I did. Jeremiah was mine, but only newly so. I wrung my hands. “Will you let me look?”
A fiery turmoil knitted his eyebrows. “I told you it wasn’t so bad.”
The wave of rejection was heavy, like a tangible weight upon my shoulders. “Okay.”
He stood and strode quickly into the trees. “I’m going hunting.”
Ridiculous man. Putting me off was one thing, but if he thought he was up for traipsing through the woods to hunt down goodness-knows-what, he’d lost his blasted mind. I ran after him, fueled by my anger. Anger over his rejection, anger over his stubbornness, anger at the danger of this place.
“Jeremiah!” I yelled, spinning. He’d disappeared like some apparition of the forest. I turned and turned until I was dizzy. I couldn’t remember the way I’d come and nothing looked familiar. “Jeremiah?” I whispered.
There. He stood like a statue against a giant fir tree. Had he been there all along? Pulling himself to his full height he stalked closer. “It’s dangerous to run off into the woods alone.” His voice sounded strange—raspier than I’d heard before.
“I wasn’t going alone. I was following you to keep you from running off wounded to hunt or whatever it is you think you are supposed to be doing.”
He stood so close I could smell the iron of his spilling blood. “I need meat,” he murmured. “I can’t heal on cheese and bread. Go on back to camp and I’ll be back with dinner.”
I tipped my chin upward and glared. “I’m not going back without you. Let me see it.”
If I wasn’t glaring directly up at him, I would’ve missed the slight turning of the corner of his mouth. Instead of telling me to get lost, however, he pulled his jacket back to expose his bloodied shirt. Well, I’d asked for it. Clenching my hands didn’t steady them like I’d hoped, but I untucked his shirt anyway. I lifted and pulled until the cloth separated from the drying blood that held it. Jeremiah’s eyes never left me and he never flinched, but as the tautness of his skin and musculature was exposed to the cold breeze, I sucked air through my teeth at the sight of the extent of the injury. I wasn’t practiced in medicine but I was pretty sure that was part of his rib peeking through the open skin and muscle. It needed cleaning but I was too chicken to even touch it.
He grabbed my wrist and pushed the palm of my hand against the stone hard flatness of his blood-slicked abdomen. Fear suffocated me as his other hand brushed a strand of hair away from my face. His muscles flexed with every breath he took, and an unfamiliar churning spilled warmth into my center. His eyes, dark and hungry, held me frozen in place, like he held some power over my ability to flee.
The spell was broken when he loosed my gaze and brought his lips to mine. Instinct born of learned fear had me pushing him away despite my wanting. “Don’t.”
He eased back for a moment, but then his lips crashed onto mine and the earth around me vibrated like another stick of dynamite had been lit under my rails. My back was against a tree before I knew we’d even moved, and his weight was so great against me, I gasped for air as his teeth grazed my neck. His tongue brushed the closed seem of my lips as if he were asking for an invitation. I’d never kissed like this, but instinct told me I wanted to open for him. He invaded my mouth and my knees buckled at how good he tasted, at how good he felt against me. Long, lapping strokes explored my mouth, then trailed down my jaw to my throat. I wanted more. “Jeremiah,” I breathed. I didn’t know what I meant to say, only that I needed to utter his name.
Hands gripping the back of my neck, hips bucking against me in a slow motion and I gasped when I felt just how riled up I’d got him. That tiny noise from my throat seemed to break the spell Jeremiah had fallen under. His lips pulled away from the tender skin at my throat, leaving the chill of the loss of our connection. We stood there, panting and staring at each other warily. Slowly, I unclenched my fist from the back of his bloodied shirt. When had I clutched onto him like that?
“Camp’s that way,” he rumbled against the overly sensitive nerve endings by my ear. He pointed and through the woods, the glow of a campfire beckoned me. His weight lifted and like a dream, he was gone into the lengthening shadows of the woods. Like some drunken boozehound I stumbled toward the inviting warmth of the campfire.
“Are you all right?” The look of alarm on Kristina’s face would’ve been comical if I could think straight. Her eyes stayed riveted on my bloody hand.
What must I look like to gain such worry from her? I patted my hair gingerly but really I didn’t care. Luke grinned like a cat with a mouse from across the fire.
“Oh, I’d say she’s more than all right,” he said.
“Luke,” she warned.
I cleared my throat once and then again when nothing intelligent came to mind. “Jeremiah went hunting.”
Luke’s grin grew to an obnoxious size. “Yeah, we got that when he said, I’m going hunting.”
“Oh, right.” I plopped down on an overturned log while Kristina finished tying a knot in her husband’s bandages. The frayed fabric looked suspiciously like the underneath of Kristina’s skirts. Clever.
By the time my husband arrived back with four fat hares, the fire had warmed me straight through and I was again in control of my mental facilities.
“How did you get four rabbits so quickly? I thought they were rather hard to catch and I didn’t hear a single shot.”
Jeremiah balanced the spitted meat over the flames with a system of y-shaped branches. “Hunting’s always come natural to me.”
Kristina snorted but covered it up with a cough. I caught it though and narrowed my eyes. Obviously I wasn’t in on the joke, and the feeling of being the outsider not trusted to get it was a slap to cold skin. My thin jacket enveloped me as I huddled deeply into it. If I was pouting, so be it. He wouldn’t let me dress his wounds, he’d kissed me like some rutting animal in the woods, and now he was a jester at my expense.
“Here.” He shed his coat and put it over my legs. It was a long, weather-proof duster that went down to his knees which meant it nearly covered me entirely. The air inside was warm and smelled of him.
“Wo
n’t you be cold?” I asked, eyeing the ripped shirt and the red gore beneath it.
“No. I can handle the cold better than you.”
I scowled. “You can do everything better than me, can’t you?”
He turned the spits and sank back against the log beside me. His arms enveloped me with the immoveable strength of an ancient oak tree. “Shh, now. I wasn’t trying to offend you, woman. I was just answering your question.”
Between the warmth of my jacket, his duster, his body heat and the way he lit my insides on fire, I was likely to burst into flames at any moment, but as time dragged on, each of my muscles relaxed in turn. Just as I was about to shed the heat of his duster, he left me to pull the spits from the fire.
“For you, my lady.” A very dead, skinless, headless bunny steamed away on the stick he handed me.
“What do I do with it?”
Kristina grabbed two more from the fire. “You eat it,” she suggested.
I took the hot stick by the end and waited until it cooled. Luke and Jeremiah apparently had no sensation of heat in their mouths, since they immediately pulled hot strips of meat from the ribs and legs and ate with the tenacity of starving dogs. Kristina blew dainty puffs of frozen air over hers and my assumption that women were, in fact, the more intelligent gender was encouraged.
The rabbit wasn’t half bad if I ignored the imaginings of the poor bunny’s ended life and of the babies that were probably waiting for it to come home while I ate their parent. Did rabbits have babies in late winter? I finished most of mine and Jeremiah skillfully plucked anything I’d missed.
The train sat derailed in the clearing in front of us, and lanterns lit it from the inside. Every once in a while one of the passengers would move across a window. They were able to move at all because of Jeremiah and Luke’s bravery. A stoic sense of pride filled the parts of me that hadn’t been taken with fear. My husband was a ruthless killer, but only when he had to be. He’d tried to cooperate with the robbers and spare everyone’s life. Whatever he’d seen in the man who was about to steel my new wedding ring had caused his violent reaction, and despite our new acquaintance, I trusted him. My life had been spared because of his actions, of that I was certain.