Page 41 of Entangled

Jasper

Survival tip #144

Fear the fury of a woman

who has nothing left to lose.

This isn’t a camp. It’s a mausoleum.

The morning light is too bright on the repulsive, vomit-soaked corpses that lie strewn between packs and bed pallets. I count at least six. A few low groans creak like wind between heavy tree limbs. The whole place reeks like sick and unwilling defecation, and I cover my nose with my sleeve to dull the wretched stink, not caring how Jaykob might mock me for it.

One woman—distinctlynotEden—is hunched and wailing over a limp body with a plum-colored, eye-bulging face.

She doesn’t even look up to acknowledge us.

Jaykob storms into the camp, kicking over body after body.

“Don’t touch them,” I caution sharply, studying their bloated, purple features. “They could be sick.”

“Not sick.” Dominic crouches by a large, overturned pot. “Poisoned.”

Frantically, I scan the bodies, looking for silky brown hair. Glasses. Delicate hands.

I can’t see her.

Relief and queasy fear spill through me. But if she’s not here, then where?

Jaykob begins ripping aside half-dismantled tents and shredding apart pallets like she might be hiding under the wilted blankets, and the barbarian with the sword—pardon, the highly distinguishedex-president of the Grande Medieval Association of America—tears through every bag he can find. At least the thunderous buffoon is silent.

It only took two and a half hours to get here.

Dominic ignores the carnage and strides over to the sobbing woman.

“You.” Dominic’s voice is hard, and so emotionless I’m sure he’s strangling everything inside him until it gasps. “Was there another woman here? Eden?”

She clutches more tightly at the body beneath her, her wails quieting to hushed, choked sobs.

“She’s quiet. Serious.” He pauses. “Beautiful.”

The rasp in his tone on the last draws my attention from studying the curiously peaceful face of a man with thick bandages wrapped around his torso.

And I see the woman working something loose from beneath her dead friend.

“Dominic, watch out,” I snap just as she launches herself up with a scream, a jagged dagger in her hand.

Dominic swerves back, his mouth compressing in irritation, then catches the woman’s arm on the backswing. My heart staggering, I watch as he spins her and plucks the weapon from her hand. He tosses it to the side impatiently, then shoves her away from him.

As she twists around, her red, tear-streaked face crumples in anger and disbelief. She seems to be having a hard time getting air.

Dominic crosses his arms over his chest. “Eden,” he repeats, as though she didn’t just try to cut him to ribbons. “Was she here or not?”

I rub my forehead. “Dominic, perhaps a gentler?—”

Bentley whoops behind me. “Got ’em. Got the meds, you dead bastard!”

He laughs like a cannonade, and the woman’s eyes crash between him, Dom, and me, then fall to the body on the ground. Her gaze sticks.

I barely stop myself from throwing something at the obtuse human tornado.

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