Eye of the Falcon (Psychic Visions #12)(5)
She’d been shot by a small caliber handgun at close range. He gently rolled her forward and found no exit wound.
“Goddammit.” He glared at Rikker. “What the hell is going on here?”
In a move that shocked Eagle into silence, Rikker slowly lowered his head and stroked the woman’s cheek with his beak.
“Well, shit,” he whispered. Eagle pulled off his shirt, throwing it across her form. Wishing he had a blanket with him, he glanced at the house and realized it’d be better to pick her up and take her back, but how badly wounded was she? He worried about internal injuries the most. Still, she couldn’t stay here. That’s when he noticed the bright red blood on the grass beside her head. As soon as he probed that side, she moaned. In a gentle voice he whispered, “Take it easy. You’re safe now.”
Just then she rolled to her back. Her eyes opened, and cloudy midnight-blue irises gazed at him. She seemed to focus, only to have her lashes slowly drop again. Her mouth worked, and he could sense the effort behind her need to speak.
“It’s okay. You’re safe.”
Her eyes opened, this time with more clarity, and landed on Rikker. Instead of crying out or screaming in terror, she murmured, “Mo chara, you found me.” She gently stroked the falcon. He crooned at her touch, and her eyes drifted closed again.
Aware of time passing, but also aware of something magical happening, Eagle studied her waxy features, his gaze catching sight of the fresh blood on her forehead.
He slipped his arms under her frail form and lifted her. As if Mother Nature herself was helping, the wind picked up, making the trees bow around him, the branches forming a protective curtain for him to carry her through, unseen by others. The air held an eeriness, like something otherworldly. The dust swirled up at his feet, taking away his footprints, even though it had rained just that morning. And then a rumble sounded, … as if someone gave them cover to hide the noise Eagle now made.
Unnerved, but understanding an opportunity had presented itself, he cradled her against his chest and strode back to the dogs. He awkwardly made it over the fence and froze. Rikker stood on Gunner’s back, both ahead of Eagle as if urging him to move faster, with neither complaining about the odd transportation system. Even Hatter was out in front, for once a serious look in his eye.
Eagle didn’t have a clue what was going on, but, whatever it was, it had to do with the injured woman in his arms. He picked up speed, almost running to his house. As he came to the large falcon pens, the silence was suffocating. His heart slammed against his chest, and he could hardly breathe for the tension coiling inside.
As soon as he pounded up the steps to his house and bolted inside, the dogs barked and the raptors screeched, filling his world with a cacophony of sounds—like some invisible command had been released.
He stared down at the frail woman in his arms and asked in a low shocked voice, “Who are you? And what the hell just happened to my world?”
*
She woke up in a dream. Fog surrounded her; pain filled her. Like being on a roller coaster of agony as she shifted and moved, yet she wasn’t the one doing the shifting or the moving. Was she being carried?
Her body shifted again but in a gentle wavelike motion. Not choppy and jerky as she would have expected if carried. The sound in her ear was warm and reassuring—a heartbeat—a strong, vibrant, rhythmical pulse that drove through her consciousness and found a surprising response in her own chest. She was alive? Really? After all she’d been through?
She didn’t think it was possible. She hadn’t given up hope, but she certainly hadn’t thought a rescue was possible. She remembered running through the bushes, through the trees, falling, picking herself up and carrying on again. Although desperate to find help, when she crossed a road, she’d stopped, considered it briefly, and then realized she couldn’t trust anyone. And she’d bolted across the road and over the fence to the woods on the other side.
The fence meant somebody owned the land. Somebody cared. She could only hope they weren’t like those she’d left behind. Just the thought of anybody from that group following her had her picking up her feet and running again.
She’d yet to make a sound, but, in her mind, she could hear her screams. She couldn’t stop crying out in pain at each step, but she wasn’t sure her voice worked anymore. The last time she had screamed, it was as if her voice had been broken. To be forever a raw echo of her former voice, one she’d barely recognized. Something else she could lay at her captors’ feet.
If anybody would ask, all she could say was they were male—one to three, maybe four; she didn’t know anymore. They’d all taken turns one way or another. But there’d been one boss. He’d ordered everything that had been done to her. She’d started with clothes and ended up nude. And yet she hadn’t been raped. Although grateful, she didn’t understand. It was more about power and humiliation. Stress. The boss had used the word stressors over and over again when he spoke to the other men. She didn’t understand. She’d retreated like an animal, curled into a ball, trying to get away from them. But failed every time. And they’d go at it again. Tiny razor blades, cigarettes. She kept screaming, and nobody would listen.
The boss kept asking her questions. She didn’t understand what they wanted. At the end she didn’t even understand the questions. The endless pain became too much. She’d retreated inside herself deliberately. It had taken her a while to figure out that acting one step away from death was the only way she would get the men to relax enough that she might escape.