Page 2 of Chained Knight

Should’ve packed a machete. But if she had access to one of those she might’ve done something else before now. There was no telling how an animal would act when cornered. Plenty submitted, sure… but there were a few who eventually bit.

Well, she’d gotten a mouthful. A rancid one, to be sure, but at least she wouldn’t be slapped anymore. Or kicked, or screamed at. Or choked.

Or thrown on the bed, attempting to muffle her sobs while the man who’d promised to honor and cherish grunted atop her.

Sure, maybe she’d feel different after a few nights sleeping in the cold, especially if her old nightmares returned, though Christ knew her waking life had turned into something almost as bad. Still, at that moment, all Ari Millar—she was taking her maiden name back, thank youverymuch—felt was the high savage exultation of escape.

Starving free was better than a gilded, horrifying cage. She just hoped she had enough willpower to remember as much once the hunger really bit. The wind freshened, pouring through treetops, and thorns on a long juicy bramble-branch scraped across the knee of her jeans.

Her mouth a pained rictus, her cheek and ribs aching, her throat on fire and her scraped hands outstretched, Ari plunged through bushes and low scrub, veering drunkenly between trees.

And of course, because nothing ever went her way, it began to rain.

2

PRESSURE AND CONDITIONS

At first itwasn’t bad. Falling drops were caught in the canopy and a few irregular flashes of lightning showed just in time to steer Ari away from holes, cracks in the hillside, or vine-clots.

All too soon the treetops were saturated; heavy splatters thudded down all around as she crouched briefly in the lee of a hoop-skirted evergreen. The branches began to toss as the wind got serious about its work, and the lightning, now finished tuning up, commenced to baton in earnest, orchestral thunder obediently keeping time.

A half-glimpsed overhang promised some kind of shelter possibly free of venomous—or anxious—critters. Of course, it wasn’t much; still, she was dashing across soft mud and hopping a small stream chuckling merrily slantwise on the hill before she could weigh up disadvantages. Her ankle threatened to roll, but she made it into comparative safety and stood blinking heavily, her left cheek a furnace, her neck throbbing, and her lungs working deeply, smoothly.

She was alive, Ari realized. Her heart thumped along, her throat was raw but plenty of air was getting through, her fingersand toes all worked. Even the scabs on the back of her head weren’t sending warm trickles down her nape anymore. She was watching one of Mother Nature’s finest light shows, fit for a Renaissance master to immortalize, and she wasn’t soaked too badly.

She was also shivering and stood a very good chance of dying from hypothermia tonight, but at least she wasn’t lying stiffly in bed waiting for Mike to come home, gauging how drunk he was by the sound of the bedroom door opening. The thunder was far nicer than Wanda Lee’s syrupy drawl, and the cold was balmy compared to old Earl’s paralyzing pale blue gaze.

All told, this was damn near a vacation. She’d been wise enough to grab her old hiking boots from the closet’s depths along with the backpack; there was some utility in growing up poor enough to understand the necessity of good shoes if you could get them. That was a blessing, right?

Mom would be proud of her optimism. Rose-colored glasses were, so far as Sylvie Millar had been concerned, the only possible response to the world’s cruelty.

Ari had her own thoughts, none repeatable in polite company. With the rain coming down in buckets, lightning jabbing regularly, and thunder a continuous grumble, the cops probably weren’t going to be looking for her.Thatwas worth feeling good about, right?

Her backpack wedged safely against the rear wall of the semi-cave, she stared at a silver curtain of falling water. It was hard to tell if lightning was getting closer, since the thunder-growls and bellows overlapped into a nearly continuous roar rivaling that of the deluge. The small stream was a torrent now, and she seemed to be standing in the only dry spot for miles around.

At least,relativelydry. She devoutly hoped other animals wouldn’t also find it agreeable, or that if they did they were of a mind to get along instead of fighting over space. Ari pressedhard against the wall, something inside her pack jabbing at her lumbar region—maybe the textbook, the only piece left of her college life, but now she couldn’t remember everything she’d packed. Had she taken the gun?

Now would be a good time to get rid of evidence. Yet she stayed frozen, staring at tossing branches lit by bright white bursts, the foaming stream swelling past its banks and tearing great chunks of dirt free. The noise was like standing in front of concert speakers, a deep throb pressing hard against skin, ears, bones. Rivulets fell from the overhang’s lip, and the moment she noticed some bore chunks of rock and dirt was terrifying, sure.

Yet it was better than crouching in a bedroom corner while Mike raged. At least the storm wasn’t really personal—then again, had her husband’s fury been the same? A simple product of pressure and conditions, emotional weather she could have managed if she’d prepared better or been more of what he wanted?

You think you’re special, city girl?Wanda Lee’s hiss like a threatened cottonmouth, her nicotine-tinged breath brushing Ari’s nose.You’re nothing. Mikey should get rid of you, just see if we don’t.

A massive white glare filled the world, thunder immediate at its heels. A tepid wall of air moved through the trees, ripping leaves and branches free, scraping past the overhang’s precarious bubble. Ari screamed; the ground under her boots softened alarmingly.

Oh, crap. The whole hill trembled; had something divine noticed a woman whose hands still tingled from a .38’s jolts hiding here? Wanda Lee went to church on Wednesdays and Sundays, nodding and smiling; maybe she had a few credits to spend on some vengeful smiting saved up in the ol’ heavenly bank.

The world didn’t care about bruises, swelling, broken bones. All it wanted were appearances kept. The Hardisons were champions at that game, a thin veneer over the truth like Victorian fixers dabbing fig leaves on Adam and Eve.

Ari wasn’t truly surprised when the earth gave way. Another white flash, a brief starry flicker ofwell of course it would end this way, and the landslide tore free of the hill as thunder laughed like a portly sheriff who had just been asked to do his damn job. She fell, grateful it wasn’t hunger or hypothermia after all, her backpack torn loose and her throat bubbling with a bottled scream.

But of course it couldn’t be that easy.

3

POST-INCIDENT MORNING

Her left hand was cold;her right, pressed against an exposed slice of belly since her T-shirt and flannel had ridden up, was warm. Her back ached, a fuzzy faraway feeling, and her throat was afire with thirst. There was a crust across her eyes, and something hard digging into her hip.

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