The Bones of Valhalla (Purge of Babylon, Book 9) Read online

  He grunted, but then glanced quickly over at the door. “Lara made it pretty clear we can’t go around blabbing about him. I think that’s a good idea. It’s hard to predict how the others will take the news.”

  “Lara’s always been the smartest person in the room. It pays to listen to what she says.”

  “You won’t get any disagreements from me,” Nate said as he leaned over her, looking her up and down.

  “Take a picture, why dontcha.”

  “Zoe really doped you up, huh?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “You’re still the hottest thing on this boat. Have I mentioned that?”

  “Yes, but you have my permission to keep saying it.”

  He grinned before glancing at the window across the room.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “He’s still out there…”

  “Who?”

  “Our pal Mason.”

  She frowned. Mason brought out the worse in her, and she couldn’t picture his beady little eyes without getting angry. Not just at him, but at herself for not pulling the trigger when she’d had the chance.

  “We should have shot him,” she said.

  “As Danny would say, shoulda, coulda, woulda, but didnta.”

  “You’ve been hanging around Danny too much.”

  “I know,” Nate said, and flicked the remains of his Mohawk over to one side. “I’m even losing my sense of style.”

  “So what’s the negative side?”

  “Oh, below the belt, lady.”

  She smiled. This time it came out better. Or, at least, she thought it did. She was so groggy it could have looked awkward and freakish, for all she knew.

  “Strangely enough, I miss it,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Your dumb Mohawk.”

  He flashed a triumphant smirk. “I knew you’d come around.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m making an appointment with Carly tomorrow, just for you.”

  “I said I missed it, I didn’t say I wanted it back.”

  “Hey, make up your mind.”

  “Come here,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Just come here.”

  He leaned over her and she reached up, took his face in her hands, and pulled him down. There should have been stabbing pain from her left shoulder where she was shot, but she hardly felt anything and had no trouble directing Nate until their lips touched. He tasted both sweet and salty, like most things out here on the ocean.

  She didn’t know how long they kissed and wasn’t all that concerned about the passing time until someone cleared their throat.

  Nate pulled back and smiled across the room at Zoe. “Hey, doc.”

  When had Zoe come back? Or had she been here the entire time?

  Gaby couldn’t tamp down—and really, didn’t want to—the flair of annoyance with herself for her lack of focus on her surroundings.

  What would Will say?

  “Seriously, guys, I just came back from lunch,” Zoe said. “Go easy on the lovey dovey stuff when us single people are around.”

  “Give us a break,” Nate said. “We almost died out there. Twice.” He looked back at her. “Twice, right?”

  She thought about it. “Three times?”

  “You sure?”

  “Larkin, Starch, then Gallant.”

  “So we’re not counting when that Warthog strafed us on the road?”

  “You think we should?”

  “A hog tried to do what to you on the road?” Zoe said.

  “Warthog,” Nate said. “It was one of Mercer’s warplanes.”

  “Christ. What else does that psycho have flying around out there?” Zoe looked down at her watch. “Five more minutes; then you need to let her get some rest.”

  “I’ve had plenty of rest,” Gaby said.

  “Hey, who’s the one with the medical degree here?”

  “Can I sleep in here with her?” Nate asked. “It’s pretty cramped out there with all the new faces around. You can’t go around a corner without running into people. And you have the other two empty beds…”

  “Okay,” Zoe said, “but you need to let her rest. You’ll be able to talk to your heart’s content tomorrow. Five more minutes of chatter, then it’s night-night for her. And that goes for you, too. I see you barely getting by out there.”

  “I’m fine, doc.”

  “Bull. Your wound’s going to take longer to heal than hers. By tomorrow she’ll be running around and you’ll still be limping along.”

  Nate sighed, but said, “Thanks, doc.”

  Zoe returned to her work at the far counter while Nate looked back down at her.

  “How’s your side?” Gaby asked.

  He shrugged. “I won’t be playing hopscotch with the kids anytime soon, or cannonballing into the Gulf of Mexico, but it’s getting better. I’ve already asked Lara to put me on guard rotation outside Will’s room.”

  “And she said yes?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Good.”

  “Why, you don’t think I can handle it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I handled it pretty well in Gallant.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She sighed. “Real talk?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “The truth.”

  “Always.”

  “I thought you were going to fall down and die on me every time I looked at you.”

  He raised both eyebrows. “Was I really that bad?”

  “Worse.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah.”

  He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Thank God you were there, then.” He smiled again, and in that moment Gaby realized she would never get tired of seeing it. “But then I thank God every day that you came into my life.”

  “Corny,” she said, but couldn’t help but smile back up at him anyway.

  “Corn on the cob?”

  “Maybe on a stick.”

  “You love my stick.”

  “I heard that,” Zoe said from behind them.

  Gaby stifled a giggle. She couldn’t remember the last time she had done that, and it should have embarrassed her, but it didn’t. Not here, now, with Nate sitting next to her. The fact that they had survived Texas, gotten through the nightmare of Gallant, only made her appreciate having him at her side more.

  “We really need our own room,” she whispered.

  “What I’ve been saying,” Nate said. He gave her a peck on the cheek, then whispered, “The things I’d do to you when we’re finally alone again…”

  “And healed up first, right?”

  “Sure, if you wanna be all cautious about it.”

  “I prefer not dying while doing the…you know.”

  “Oh, I know,” he said, and grinned widely, though for some reason his head, followed soon by the rest of his body, started to become a little blurry. He must have seen her reaction, because he frowned. “You okay?”

  “Meds are kicking in again…”

  He reached down to stroke her hair gently. “Go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  “Promise?”

  “Always.”

  “And no Mohawks.”

  He let out an overly dramatic sigh. “You never let me have any fun.”

  She smiled and drifted off…

  It was fully dark when she opened her eyes again, but she didn’t have a lot of trouble seeing the two figures moving around the room. At first she thought it was Zoe and Nate—maybe he was helping her with something—but no, because the two silhouettes separated and became three, then four, in all.

  Gaby recognized Zoe’s outline as a bigger, taller shape directed the doc from one side of the room to the other. Gaby’s instincts snapped to attention and the words Ghouls. There are ghouls on the Trident! flashed across her mind, but it didn’t take very long before her e
yes adjusted to the semidarkness, and what once looked like a black-eyed ghoul instead turned into a man wearing jeans and a plaid working shirt.

  But her alarms didn’t stop completely, because the man was holding a handgun in his right fist as he pushed Zoe forward with his other hand, and Gaby woke up to him in mid-sentence saying, “—it’ll be over soon. All you have to do is not get in the way.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Zoe asked.

  “We don’t have a choice,” the man said.

  “Need-to-know, Bray, remember?” a voice said.

  Gaby turned her head slightly to look at the silhouette that had spoken. He was shorter and thinner than the first, and holding a pistol on a fourth figure—

  Nate.

  He was standing at the foot of a bed, hands folded behind the back of his head, and he was looking directly at her. When he saw that she had seen him, Nate shook his head—just barely. The man with the gun behind him wouldn’t have picked it up, and she wouldn’t have either, if she hadn’t been staring right at him.

  No? Why is he telling me no?

  She understood as soon as the second man leaned out from behind Nate and zeroed in on her. Gaby closed her eyes and lay perfectly still, and though she didn’t do it on purpose (or, at least, she wasn’t aware of having done it on purpose), her heartbeat slowed down and she slipped back into a relaxed state, the kind that someone sleeping would be in.

  “What’s wrong with her?” the second man asked.

  “She was shot,” Nate said. “She’s not going to give you any trouble. Zoe’s got her all doped up.”

  “Is that true?” the man named Bray asked.

  “Yes,” Zoe said. “She’s unconscious. Just leave her alone.”

  “Check her, just to be sure,” Bray said.

  “Stay here,” the second man said, though Gaby didn’t know whom he was talking to. It was probably Nate.

  Quick footsteps as someone approached her bed; then the heat of a body leaning over her, along with the strong aroma of fried fish on the man’s clothes and breath. A (cold) pair of fingers pressed against the side of her neck, then gripped her chin and turned her head from side to side.

  “Well?” the first man said.

  “She looks asleep,” the second one said.

  “Maybe she’s faking it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Fingers pried open the lid over her right eye, and Gaby stared back at a man with short blond hair. He looked to be in his late twenties and may or may not have been sporting facial hair; it was difficult to see a lot of details with only the moonlight splashing across different parts of the room for light.

  Gaby willed her eye not to blink, or move, or for her pupil to dilate. Was that possible? Could you even force something like that?

  The man tapped lightly on one of her cheeks, and she let out a soft, annoyed groan and opened her other eye.

  “She’s awake,” the man said. “But she looks pretty out of it, like the kid said. Shouldn’t be any trouble.”

  “You gotta make sure,” Bray said.

  “I’m sure.”

  The man let go of her eyelid, and she let it slide shut and turned her head slightly while continuing to lie still.

  “What did you give her?” she heard Bray asking.

  “Sedatives for the pain,” Zoe said. “I had to take a bullet out of her. She’ll sleep through this whole thing and wake up tomorrow thinking it was all just a bad dream.”

  Gaby didn’t know if that was true, but Zoe must have sold it well enough, because Bray said, “Let’s keep an eye on her anyway.”

  “Yeah,” the other man said.

  Nice work, doc.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Zoe said. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “No, you made a mistake when you brought that thing onboard,” Bray snapped back.

  “Thing?” Gaby thought.

  Will. They’re talking about Will.

  How did they know?

  “We have to keep this between us,” Lara had said when she was here earlier. “Understand? No one can know about what’s down there. Especially Riley’s people.”

  So how did these two know? They had to be a part of Riley’s group, because she didn’t recognize either one of them. It didn’t help that there were a lot of new faces onboard the Trident these days.

  “What now?” she heard Nate asking.

  “Sit down,” the one who wasn’t Bray said. There was just enough menace in his voice to let them know he meant business.

  “And then what?” Nate asked.

  Before someone could answer Nate, a radio squawked and Bray said, “We’ve secured the infirmary.”

  “Any trouble?” a voice asked. It was muffled, clearly coming through the radio.

  “Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

  “Good. Because if this thing goes south, we’re going to need the leverage.”

  “So we’re proceeding?”

  “Yeah, we’re proceeding,” the new voice said.

  Proceeding with what?

  Gaby resisted the temptation to move or open her eyes, and it took all of her willpower to keep her arms and legs from making any sudden movements that would draw attention. She continued to breathe, because sleeping people did that. She had to be content to listen and use what she heard to sketch out the room to the best of her ability.

  Bray and Zoe were to her left at the wall with the windows, while the second man whose name she didn’t know remained on the right side with Nate. They had smartly split up the room’s two occupants (not counting her) for easier control and had no doubt locked the door as soon as they entered. She expected them to start barricading the door, but maybe they had already done that before she woke up to the sounds of their movements.

  “Sit down,” Bray said from her left. Then, a few seconds later, “Please.”

  It almost sounded as if he was really asking Zoe, which didn’t make any sense. Men with guns, especially ones that had taken hostages, didn’t ask—they ordered.

  “You’re making a terrible mistake,” Zoe said.

  “You already said that,” Bray said. “You should be quiet.”

  “Things were going well; we would have taken you straight to the Bengal Islands,” Zoe pressed on. “You shouldn’t have done this.”

  “You don’t even know what we’re doing.”

  “I don’t have to. I just know what you’ve done. Which is come in here with guns and taken me and my patients hostage. That’s enough.”

  “Enough for what?” the second man asked.

  “To get you killed,” Zoe said.

  Someone snickered. It might have been Bray, but she reconsidered when the second man, on her right, said, “We outnumber you almost five to one on the boat. And half of your number are kids and an old lady. I think we’ll take our chances.”

  “This is all your fault anyway,” Bray said.

  “What is?” Nate asked.

  “Bray, need-to-know,” the second man said.

  But Bray ignored him and said, “That thing you brought back onboard with you this afternoon. Did you think we wouldn’t find out? Did you really think you could keep it a secret forever?”

  There was a brief moment of silence, and she imagined Nate and Zoe trying to come up with a response.

  They know about Will. Jesus, how did they know about Will?

  “We trusted you,” the second one was saying.

  “Says the man with the gun,” Nate said. “Besides, it’s not a threat.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, it’s not a threat?” Bray said. “That’s a ghoul down there, kid.”

  “It’s…different,” Nate said. He seemed to be struggling with his words. “You don’t understand—”

  “We understand plenty; you brought one of those things into our midst and you didn’t tell us about it,” the second man interrupted. “True or not true?”

  Silence again.

  “That’s what I tho
ught,” the second man said.

  “You can still stop this,” Nate said. “No one’s been hurt yet. Turn around now and leave the room, and—”

  “What, you won’t tell anyone?” Bray said, the mocking in his voice clear as day. “Too late for that now, kid.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “What?”

  “Kid,” Nate said. “Do I look like I’m a goddamn kid?”

  Someone chuckled, before the man who wasn’t Bray said, “Bray’s forty going on sixty. Everyone’s a kid to him.”

  “You got a name?” Nate asked.

  “Collins,” the second man said.

  “Like I said, Collins, this doesn’t have to go any further. We can still salvage this. But that option goes out the window when someone fires the first shot—”

  Pop-pop!

  Two shots, close together, and it came from below deck.

  “Too late for that now,” Bray said, and Gaby thought there was something that almost sounded like regret in his voice.

  “This was the plan, remember?” Collins said.

  “I know…”

  “What’s happening?” Zoe asked.

  “We’re doing what you should have done when you found that thing in Texas,” Bray said. “After that, we’re taking over the boat.”

  “Over our dead bodies,” Nate said.

  “Yeah, well, if it comes to that,” Collins said, and like before with Bray, Gaby thought she could hear the regret in Collins’s voice also.

  The two shots were followed by silence—maybe it was ten seconds, or thirty, or possibly even a minute (though she didn’t think that last part could possibly be true).

  But it didn’t last, and soon the pop-pop-pop of fully automatic rifle fire exploded from below her…before it was joined by gunfire from seemingly all across the boat.

  4

  Lara

  “No wonder you spend all your time in here,” Bonnie said as she stepped inside the cabin. “Compared to the zoo out there, this is paradise.”

  Lara smiled and finished drying her hair with the towel. She couldn’t remember the last time she had a moment to herself where she could take a shower and spend more than just a few perfunctory seconds in front of the mirror. “Is that what you came here for? To make me feel guilty about having this penthouse suite?”