The Woman. Part 5

Cleek has drenched the net in water overnight and attached Brian's weights to the corners at either end. The net doesn't so much drop over her as it plummets plummets over her. The woman has fallen to her knees instinctively, twisting furiously inside it. Raging, howling. over her. The woman has fallen to her knees instinctively, twisting furiously inside it. Raging, howling.

He's got to be fast.

He half-jumps, half-slides down the path from the gra.s.sy roof of the cave to the entrance, the Remington over his shoulder. The woman has her knife free and she's standing, slashing. Had she not gotten so tangled up at first she'd be out by now. Free. And that's a G.o.dd.a.m.n chilling thought.

She's roaring something.

"Deamhan! Sainmahiniu liom fuil! Deamhan!"

Whatever the f.u.c.k that that is. is.

The pelt has twisted in the net in front of her. To slash through to him it seems she must slash through the pelt. The man stands in front of her and she can smell his fear and can smell his excitement. The man wants to go to her. The man does not.

"Devil! I'll drink your blood! Devil!"

Her arm rises, falls. Her arm speaks her desire.

Kill.

The man dares a single step closer. Her own legs are entangled in his web. She cannot free them without doing herself serious harm. She slashes forward instead through the pelt and through the net and feels her arm finally come free of him, this extension of him, this man-thing. She lurches forward.

Falls.

He sees murder in her eyes. Or worse.

"Deamhan!"

Cleek stands over her. Not too close. She's still got that pig-sticker of a G.o.dd.a.m.n knife well in hand. And G.o.d, he thinks, look at those teeth! But she's tangled up pretty good now. Only that one arm free. That's free enough.

"I'm afraid I can't understand a f.u.c.king thing you're saying, lady."

The b.u.t.t-end of the Remington makes a satisfying thunk thunk against her thrashing head. So that then she stops thrashing altogether. against her thrashing head. So that then she stops thrashing altogether.

Cleek allows himself to breathe.

The really hard, nervous part is untangling her. He has no choice but to do it right then and there in front of the cave because there's no way in h.e.l.l he's going to drag a sodden net with eighty pounds of weights attached - not to mention the woman herself - all the way back to the Escalade. He uses her own knife. He tests it with his thumb and it's far sharper than his own. Carbon steel honed to a feather-edge with a bolted wooden handle. His best guess was that it would date back to the 1930s or 40s. A real antique.

They made these things better then.

But he has to use both hands to cut her free, particularly her legs and that means putting the Remington aside and though he'd hit her pretty hard he doesn't like to think what she'll be wanting to do to him when she wakes. Even unconscious she looks formidable. Easily as tall as he was, maybe taller. Scarred, heavily calloused hands with long thin fingers. Powerful back, thigh and shoulder muscles. Cleek thinks of Olympic swimmers. Washboard stomach. In fact it looks to Cleek like her large-nippled b.r.e.a.s.t.s are the only fat on her body anywhere.

There are scars all over her.

Where the h.e.l.l has she come from? he thinks.

And where the h.e.l.l has she been?

As he pulls her free of the net he sees that he's neglected to remove a single small brown ornamental starfish from within its folds. He's overlooked it. He shakes his head.

With her it will be wise to overlook nothing.

He digs the plastic cable ties out of his pack and binds her feet together and binds her hands behind her back. Her skin is surprisingly warm and pleasing to the touch. As though she burns at some slightly higher temperature than he does.

He unpacks and spreads out the beach towel that said TIME FLIES WHEN YOU'RE HAVING RUM and rolls her onto it and starts dragging.

Twenty minutes later with several stops for his Evian bottle he has her up and into the back of the Escalade. It's only then that she stirs.

He uses the Remington on her forehead before she comes fully awake.

She'd have one h.e.l.l of a headache. But he doesn't want her awake for quite some time yet. Though the prospect of that time thrills the h.e.l.l out of him.

He puts the car in gear and heads home. The Escalade purrs.

In his mind, so does Cleek.

SEVEN.

Monday morning and n.o.body home, just as he knows it will be. The kids at school. Belle and the ladies of the Rotary Youth Exchange at their weekly tea-and-coffee klatch over at Trudy Forget's place. He has the house to himself. And the cellar.

Like his father before him Chris has always been a handy kind of guy. He can cane a chair, replace the drive belt on a lawn mower, paper a wall or fix your plumbing like a pro. So outfitting the fruit cellar has hardly been a challenge at all.

The only question in his mind is, will she stay out or will he have to whack her once again.

He hauls her up over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and then eases her carefully down to the lawn while he opens the cellar door. Hauls her up again and walks her down the stairs. d.a.m.n! this lady stinks! d.a.m.n! this lady stinks! First thing he is doing to have to do is wash her down. With extreme prejudice. And he is going to need a shower himself just as soon as this is over. First thing he is doing to have to do is wash her down. With extreme prejudice. And he is going to need a shower himself just as soon as this is over.

The entire south side of the cellar is clean save some empty one-by-twelve pine shelving starting midway up from floor to ceiling. He sits her propped against the wall. Stands back a moment. Catches his breath. Watches her.

She doesn't move. Good. Good.

He takes two cable clamps from the shelf behind him - self-locking, polymer and stainless steel - kneels down and slips her wrists into them. From these depend a pair of high-tension tow cables threaded through st.u.r.dy eye bolts in the wall above her head. These he's fastened to a single cable which connects to a hand-cranked winch bolted to the wall beside him.

Cleek walks over to the winch and ratchets her up.

When she's upright in a standing position he adjusts her legs so that they conform to the pair of clamps bolted to the wall behind her, slips her ankles inside and tightens the nuts with his crescent wrench.

He smiles.

She hangs there like a rag doll.

His rag doll. rag doll.

Now that he can safely risk it he decides she demands closer inspection.

He checks her hands. Calloused beyond belief. Nails thick and cracked and yellowed. They'll need some tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. Her toenails too.

He runs his hand over the matted poultice at her side. Get rid of that. Fix it up with Bacitracin and a proper bandage, first thing.

Then her collarbone, her breastbone, covered with scars old and new, large and small. He traces the smooth wide white scar from breast to hip. The scar above her eye that ran through the blasted eyebrow to her ear.

The scars are a roadmap of rough living.

She's been through lord knows what.

What he has here is a survivor. That means she is going to be...very interesting.

The Woman slinks awake.

Perhaps it is his hands upon her that have awakened her, she doesn't know. But she is very aware of them now. They sweep across her belly, her breast, her neck. They are not hard hands but they're not soft either. She doesn't move a muscle but she does take stock. She is in a cool damp room. Metal encases her wrists and ankles. There is strain in her arms. Her head hurts badly.

The man touches her face, lifts her chin. Drops it. She lets it drop, slack, to her chest. He lifts her chin again and then with the fingers of his other hand pries open an eyelid. The eye does not so much as twitch. He is not aware of this but she sees the man quite clearly. His face is soft. Shaven. His hair is thin and slick to his scalp. His eyes squint with...what? concern concern? Does he fear he's hurt her too badly?

He hasn't.

Cleek is looking for dilation of the pupils. A sign of brain trauma. He doesn't see it. She's just out, that's all. He continues his inspection.

There's a new purple bruise along her cheekbone. He didn't put it there. He'd hit her on the forehead.

The woman is fascinating.

Her upper lip is scarred like most of the rest of her. The lower lip has fallen open.

He wonders about the teeth. Her breath is foul.

He lifts the left side of her upper lip as though checking out a dog's mouth or a cat's. The teeth range in color from brownish yellow to a kind of mossy green - they clearly haven't been brushed in years, if ever - and the wisdom tooth on this side has gone to black. The canine almost looks to have been filed sharp. Certainly it's jagged. The gums, though, are a healthy pink.

On the right side the wisdom tooth is completely missing. And now he can see definite signs of rough filing, not only on the canine but on the incisor too. It dawns on him exactly what this indicates, exactly what he's seeing.

It dawns on him too late.

The woman's head whips suddenly to the right. The jaws snap down.

The tip of his middle finger! Jesus christ it's missing! It's gone!

The finger gouts blood all across her chin, her neck and b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He waves the hand as though he'd hit himself with a hammer, hit his thumb hammering in a nail, shakes it to negate this pain which burns and throbs and runs right up his arm, shakes it to make it go away. This impossible sudden thing. His blood sprays him too. His face, his shirt.

"Ahhhhh! f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h!" b.i.t.c.h!" he screams. he screams.

He takes a shaky step backward and almost stumbles. Rights himself.

"b.i.t.c.h!" he screams again. His voice sounds wrong to him. A huge hoa.r.s.e bellow. The kind of sound his G.o.dd.a.m.n father might have made.

His eyes lock with hers. A hint of a smile in her eyes. She's smiling. She's smiling. The c.u.n.t is smiling! He watches her - hears her hears her chew. Teeth against bone. His bone. chew. Teeth against bone. His bone. Once Once. Teeth grinding. Twice. Three times. Twice. Three times.

She swallows.

The Woman has tasted him. His flesh is hers. His blood is thick and as sweet on her lips as honey. So that it does not matter what comes after, doesn't matter when he comes at her with his fist flailing, when her lips split and the pain rages through her head again far worse than when she woke. It doesn't matter because she has warned this man and he has taken note and she has taken his measure.

She has tasted him.

Cleek hits her again and again. He's savage. He's every bit his father now. She's bleeding from the mouth and one eye is shot with blood but she won't shut her eyes and that smile won't go away and he realizes he's screaming, spitting like a snake and blood is flying from her mouth, both of them painting the cellar floor a s.p.a.ckled red until finally at the brink of his own exhaustion the d.a.m.ned eyes close and she hangs limp in front of him.

He backs away, dazed by what he's done and what's been done to him.

And what he says next will make no sense at all to him an hour later.

And an hour after that, it will.

"That's just not civilized behavior! not civilized behavior!" he shouts.

It is exactly then that the pain truly washes over him. Not only from his b.l.o.o.d.y hand clutched tight in the other but, he thinks, from every bone and muscle in his body. His lungs are burning.

He has one more look at her, blood dripping from her mouth to the dusty floor.

You and I will have a little talk about this, he thinks. We're not done yet. he thinks. We're not done yet.

He shambles toward the stairs.

EIGHT.

I'm losing them again, she thought. h.e.l.l, if I didn't have my looks I'd lose them even more. How can almost an entire cla.s.sroom go sullen sullen on you? How did you make geometry into something bigger and more important than simple chalk figures on a blackboard? on you? How did you make geometry into something bigger and more important than simple chalk figures on a blackboard?