Read Online What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose) by Delany Beaumont - Free Book Online Page B

landing and I follow it down.

Part Three
    Welcome to Raintree
One
    “Is Gideon dead?”
    “He wasn’t moving. I didn’t think one of them could hurt us like that but she got him right in the head. That’s why we don’t let them play with guns.”
    The voices are dream-like, creamy and thick and slow. I can’t tell if they’re coming from inside or outside my head. But I must be awake now. I can feel damp steel pressed against my cheek, the vibration of a vehicle in motion thrumming through my body. I reach out a hand, groping blindly. I feel the cold toe of a leather shoe or boot and it’s instantly yanked back from my touch.
    “She’s waking up.”
    “You hit her hard.”
    “Why not? After what she did? She’s lucky we didn’t kill her there.”
    I try to sit up, push my body away from the floor. I’m in a dark enclosed space which I soon recognize as the back of a van. It’s a well of shadows where I am, two indistinct shapes crouching over me. I crane my neck and can see the head and shoulders of someone driving illuminated by the weak glow of dashboard lights.
    Moving my head like that brings on an agonizing wave of pain. I let out a gasp and try to take some deep breaths. It feels like giant hands are crushing my skull. I’m on all fours, swaying back and forth with the motion of the van. I want to sit up, I want to get a clear view of where I am and who these people are but every time I try to move the pain squeezes me like a vice.
    Finally the pain recedes enough so that I’m able to look up at the dark shapes above me. “Where are the kids?” My voice is cracked, the ghost of a voice. “What did you do with them?”
    One of them snorts derisively. “She’s worried about her kids.” I can’t tell if it’s a man or woman speaking. The voice still sounds strange, like it’s disembodied, floating through the space around me.
    “Down,” a harsher, more masculine voice says. The sole of a boot presses me back to the floor of the van. I’m too weak to resist the pressure and I collapse on the cold metal.
    The higher voice, closer to that of a woman’s, says, “Don’t you worry your pretty little head. We haven’t left them behind. But you—we have to watch you. You’re a murderess.”
    That last word fills the space around us, an enormous, earth-shaking word. I killed someone. All the reasons why I had to fire that last shot burst into my mind—that I had to defend us, that these Black Riders refused to make their intentions known.
    Why didn’t they show up in the daytime when we could see them? But Jendra and William came and I scared them away. If I didn’t trust the two of them, how could I have trusted these people, the way they surrounded us in the middle of the night? But then I think, maybe I was wrong. What if these are the people we’ve been looking for all along?
    I notice an odd smell that permeates the space around us. The throbbing in my head has subsided enough to enable me to pay more attention to what’s around me. It’s a coppery smell mingled with a slight hint of decay.
    I try to speak again. “Where… Where are you taking me…?”
    There’s no answer. The damp of the exposed metal I lay on starts to work its way into my body. I feel so cold I grab my knees and pull them in tight. I’m not so much frightened as dazed and hurting.
    Then the van jerks to a stop and I’m thrown against one of the front seats. My forehead smacks hard against a metal strut at the base of the seat. The razor-sharp pain I feel comes in an intense burst like a flashbulb that lasts a few seconds, then the ache in my head I felt before floods back. I reach a finger up to my forehead and can feel a wet trickle of blood.
    “What the hell, Bodie? What do you think you’re doing?” the more masculine voice says. I can just make out a shape looming over me, one of the two in the back of the van getting to his feet.
    A voice from the seat above me says defensively, “I can’t help it.