Page 51 of Hell Bent

Daniel wagged his finger in her face, trying to get some of his own back. “That’s exactly right. You really have no business—”

“Run home, you weakling.” The words came out as a snarl, deep, grizzled. That wasn’t Alex’s voice, and she knew Darlington’s father wasn’t seeing her face anymore either. “You held me hostage in my own house, you sniveling shit.”

Daniel Arlington IV gasped and stumbled backward, nearly went to his knees.

Alex willed the old man to recede but it wasn’t easy. She could feel him in her head, the ferocity of his determination, a spirit forever at war with itself, with the world, with everything and everybody around him.

“Stop screwing around, Daniel!” Harper shouted from the car, gunning the engine.

“I … I…” His mouth gaped, but he was just seeing Alex’s placid face now.

The old man was like a barely leashed dog inside her mind. Pussy. Candy-ass. How did I ever raise a son like you? You didn’t even have the balls to face me, just kept me drugged up and helpless, but I got you in the end, didn’t I?

Cosmo squirmed in Alex’s arms. She raised a hand and waved. “Bye-bye,” she singsonged.

Daniel Arlington made it into the car, and the Range Rover took off in a spray of gravel.

“Thanks, Cosmo,” Alex murmured as the cat leapt from her arms and pranced toward the back of the house to hunt. “And you.”

She shoved the old man out of her mind with all her might. He appeared in front of her, bathrobe flapping, his naked, emaciated body peppered with white hair.

“That was a one-time ride,” she said. “Don’t think about trying to hijack this particular train again.”

“Where’s Danny?” the old man growled.

Alex ignored him and marched back to Dawes and Turner.

16

When Dawes was upset, she drove even more slowly, and Alex thought it might take them two hours to get back to campus.

“They’re going to get lawyers involved,” Dawes complained.

“They’re not.”

“They’re going to pull in the Yale administration.”

“They won’t.”

“For Pete’s sake, Alex!” Dawes yanked the steering wheel to the right, and the Mercedes veered to the side of the road, nearly jumping the curb. “Stop pretending everything is going to be okay.”

“How else are we supposed to get through this?” Alex demanded. “It’s all I know how to do.” She made herself take a deep breath. “Darlington’s parents aren’t going to come back with lawyers or involve Yale.”

“Why wouldn’t they? They have money, power.”

Alex shook her head slowly. She’d seen so much in the old man’s memories, felt it all. The only time she’d been through anything like that was when she’d let the Bridegroom in and experienced the moments of his murder. She hadn’t just known he’d loved Daisy. She’d loved Daisy too. But this time there had been so much more, a lifetime of small pleasures and endless disappointment, every day and every thought shaped by Black Elm, by bitterness, by the hunger for something that might outlive his brief, weightless life.

“They don’t have either,” Alex said. “Not the way you think they do. It’s why they keep pressuring Darlington to sell Black Elm.”

Dawes looked scandalized. “But he’d never sell.”

“I know. But if they find out he’s missing, they’ll try to take it from him.”

They sat in silence for a long minute, the engine idling. Through the window Alex saw a narrow stretch of park, the leaves of its trees not yet ready to turn, but she was back at Black Elm, feeling its pull, the way it demanded love, lost in the loneliness of the place.

“They won’t get lawyers involved because they don’t want anyone looking at them too closely. They … Darlington’s grandfather basically bought them off. He wanted to raise…” She’d almost said Danny. “They just left him there, and I think they kept the old man prisoner when he got sick.” Until Danny had set him free. That was why he’d survived in hell, not just because he was Darlington, steeped in knowledge and lore, but because he had killed his grandfather.

It didn’t matter that his grandfather had asked him to do it any more than it mattered Dawes had smashed in Blake’s skull to save Alex’s life.