Chapter 15
The shift in the relationship between Nate and I was going to take some getting used to, especially when he wrapped an arm around my waist in the lobby and kissed my temple. My body felt deliciously sore, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so grounded. So wanted. Maybe before my parents died?
No one had really needed me after that. I was the one who’d needed Mrs. Byrne, and she’d been my anchor, but I wasn’t hers.
But the way Nate had worshiped my body last night, like he was the one who needed me, well, it was an addictive experience. I was tempted to blow off this stupid quest to Amourgeles and stay in bed, making love, as the warm Mediterranean sun kissed our bodies.
I sighed softly, the wind picking up the noise and whipping it away as we drove with the top down through the countryside of Crete. The further into the center of the island we went, the greener it got, the fields dotted with olive groves and white, rocky outcroppings. Hardly any cars were on the roads, and it felt a little like being free.
Nate reached over and gripped my thigh as we cruised along, and if it wasn’t for the dragging feeling in my chest, I would’ve insisted we turn around and go back to the resort. But I couldn’t ignore this feeling that tugged me further south.
Without another soul around except Nate, I could almost ignore the golden streaks in my vision. I could almost pretend we were just a couple on holiday together. That I was a normal twenty-something and not being chased by monsters. However, with every mile, the tug got stronger.
What was a whispered suggestion in Heraklion became an incessant drumbeat in my head by the time we made it to Amourgeles. It was now eating at my gut, making me feel a little nauseous.
Suddenly, it was like a heart attack, or a physical force slamming into my chest.
“STOP!”
Nate hammered the brakes, his arm whipping across my chest to hold me in place, even though I was wearing a seatbelt. I was almost out of my mind with the need to run to where the feeling was leading me. I quickly undid my seatbelt, shucking Nate’s hand from my torso.
“Here,” I breathed as I climbed from the car before he could get around the hood. “It’s here.”
He looked down the road, and in the distance, the town itself was visible. Just a smattering of tiny, square concrete houses with flat, gray roofs, which spilled down the small incline. The paint on their walls was worn and peeling from the steady Greek sun.
Except for the building in front of us.
In front of us was a twelve-foot stone wall, the edges worn smooth by time, but the spikes lodged in the tops were shining in the sun. At the center of the wall was a single tall door with a twisted brass knocker. I could see red roof tiles just peeking over the wall. It was a fortress in the middle of nowhere.
“This place?” Nate asked hesitantly, his eyes darting around, his jaw tense.
I walked to the door, raising my hand to knock. I needed to get inside the walls. The pull in my chest was too strong.
Nate caught my hand before I could slam the knocker. “Wait. I want to look around first. It feels… wrong. I want to make sure it’s safe.” I dropped my hand and bit back a whine as he led me back to the car. He belted me in as I hung out the window.
He was right. I knew that, logically. Besides, what was I going to say when someone answered that door? Oh, hi. There’s a mystical feeling in my body that wants me to come inside your walls.
What if whatever was inside there was worse than the shadow monster? Worse than the Lamia?
So I held myself still as Nate climbed back into the car and drove us further into Amourgeles. He found a psistaría, which was kind of like a cafe, and pulled up in front of it. A rusted pickup truck was the only vehicle outside, and there was a huge white dog sitting beside the door. A grapevine ran over the trellised porch, creating enticing shade that I wanted to curl up under.
Nate led me in, and in halted English, we ordered lunch. The woman behind the counter grinned widely, passing me a glass of milk. She rubbed her belly, and I smiled.
Nate pointed back down the road we drove in on. “The stone building. Is it a church?”
The woman’s smile faltered, before she plastered a fake one back in its place. “No. Private, uh, house.”
Nate gave her a charming smile, which honestly tended to fry the brain cells of anyone with a pulse, and walked outside after me. I sipped my cold milk, trying not to turn my head back up the road toward the fortress. The sun was warm but not overbearing, and I let it soak into my pale skin.
The golden threads were whipping around Nate, stronger than they normally were. I frowned and turned back to the woman in the cafe. Actually, the streaks of golden light were strong around her too. Even the dog had soft golden strands across its shaggy white fur. This town was definitely weird, and I understood what Nate meant now. I’d just been too caught up in the feeling in my chest, but there was an element of wrongness about this place.
The elderly Greek lady brought out our lunch, which made my mouth water. I was starving. No one seemed to eat a full breakfast in Crete. I’d only had a couple of pastries for breakfast, and the babies were eating through my energy stores at a rapid rate.
I dipped some fluffy bread in olive oil that didn’t taste anything like the olive oil from the grocery store shelves back home. It was something else. I moaned, and Nate’s eyes heated, like he was remembering last night.
Hell, now I was remembering last night, and my skin started to tingle with need.
Shaking his head, Nate stood, leaning down to kiss my temple. “I’m just going to have a look around. Don’t move from this spot, okay?”
I chewed my lip. “Okay.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I mean it, Wren. Eat your lunch, but don’t leave right here. Promise?”
Sighing, I nodded. “I promise.”
He gave me a stern look, which kind of made me want to bend over and tell him I’d been a bad, bad girl, but before I could, he stepped out onto the street with his hands in his pockets, looking like a tourist as he walked down the road, checking things out.
I watched him go and then went back to devouring my lunch. The huge white dog from beside the door came over and plopped his blocky head on my lap, looking up at me with so much longing, there was no way I could resist giving him a little piece of hard cheese.
A deep chuckle had me looking over my shoulder. A grizzled man stepped beneath the trellis, his floppy hat clutched in his hand. He said something in rapid Greek, and I shook my head.
“I’m sorry. I can only speak English.”
He nodded sagely. “I was saying that he likes you.”
I scratched the dog’s ear. “Is he yours?”
The old man shook his head, and the dog looked over his shoulder at the man like he was interested in his answer too. “No, Cy belongs to no one. He is, er… the village dog, yes? He comes and goes as he pleases, and we all take care of him.”
Cy huffed and looked back up at me with those big brown eyes full of pleading, and I gave him a piece of my meat.
The old man laughed again. “Well, we are all stupid for him. He looks up at you, and then you feed him. That’s why he’s so round.” The man banded his arms out in front of him and puffed out his cheeks. “He needs a little less care, I think.” He leaned over and scratched Cy’s fur at the base of his tail, making it wag faster, even if the dog seemed slightly annoyed at being called chunky. “You’re a tourist?”
I nodded, inviting the man to sit down opposite me. “Yes, we’re staying down in Heraklion. My boyfriend has just gone for a stroll.”
First rule of traveling: don’t end up in a horror movie by insinuating you’re alone in a tiny village with a weird vibe, where no one would ever find your body.
The old man smiled, and the cafe owner came out to put his own lunch plate in front of him, as well as a glass of wine. She spoke to him in rapid Greek, her eyes darting between me and the empty chair where Nate should be. The old man shrugged, and the woman huffed as she strode off.
“Your wife?”
The man snorted. “Niece.”
Considering the woman had to be pushing seventy, I wondered how old that made the man. His streaks seemed almost faded, more like a bronze than a gold. “Ah.”
“How are you liking the island? Amourgeles?”
I gave him a smile. “It’s beautiful. Feels like coming home.” I realized that was the closest description I had for the tug in my chest. Like I was so close to home, and I could feel it. But I didn’t tell the old man that—it sounded absolutely insane.
“Sometimes, the gods maneuver us where we need to be, but free will has other ideas, no?”
Man, this guy had no idea. In my case, it was literal Gods. Or monsters, at least.
As we ate, we chatted about everything. About life on the island, about the best Greek food, about his family. He had eight children, though only one or two still lived on the island and none lived in Amourgeles anymore.
After I’d finished off the food, having fed most of the cheese to Cy the Dog, Nate returned. He cast a wary eye at the old man. “Nate, this is… I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
The old man reached out and shook Nate’s hand. “Stavros.”
I smiled at him. “I’m Wren. And this is Nate.” I scratched the dog’s ear. “And this is Cy.”
Nate’s gaze ran over the man and the dog, before he nodded in greeting. He put a possessive hand on my back, as if I was about to run off with a man who must be in his late eighties, at least.
Nate continued to eye the dog, like maybe I was about to bring it home with me. Actually, that was probably more likely than me running off with the old man. Dragging his gaze back to me, he gave me a fake smile. “We should head off.”
Okay then.
I pushed myself to my feet and gave Stavros’s liver-spotted arm a squeeze. “It was lovely to meet you.” He lowered his chin in return, his dark eyes sparkling.
Nate led me away and back to the car. The dog, Cy, trailed behind us, its nose snuffling my hand. As Nate helped me into the car, he looked down at the dog, his brow lowered. “Stay.”
His voice was filled with power, and honestly, that was kind of freaky in itself. The dog didn’t seem overly perturbed, however.
“What’s with you and the dog?”
Nate shook his head, shutting the door so the dog couldn’t get in. “It feels wrong. This whole place is just bustling with supernatural energy. I don’t trust anything with you that isn’t me.”
My heart skipped a beat at his protectiveness, but when he climbed in beside me, I rested my hand on his tense forearm. “This is why we came all this way, remember? Neither of us thought it was going to be just a sleepy little Greek village.”
He frowned harder. “I’d kind of hoped that it was just so obscure, no one would think to look for you here. I hate that we’re right in the middle of their seat of power, like sitting ducks.”
I could understand that. “Let’s get this over with then, shall we?”
Nodding, Nate drove back up the road toward the stone wall. “There was nothing obvious about the place or its inhabitants. The fortress is old, really old, and it feels like history has been imbued into the very stone of its walls, but I can’t find any hints about who might be in there.”
As we pulled up outside, I drew in a deep breath. My instincts said this was what I was supposed to do. “You told me to follow my gut, remember?” I reminded him, and he muttered something under his breath that I didn’t quite catch.
I waited until he’d helped me out, then strode up to the door, determined. My heart was thundering in my chest, and a cold sweat had broken out across my skin. Grabbing the twisted bronze knocker, I slammed it down three times.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
I might have hallucinated it in the midday sun, but it felt like the sound of that knock reverberated much further than it should’ve. It echoed around us, like we were living in a Poe horror story.
We waited, but no one came. “Maybe it’s abandoned?”
He shook his head. “There are people in there.”
I didn’t ask how he knew, and when he pressed closer to my back, I sank into his strength. I knocked three more times.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Finally, the handle of the door jiggled. Holding my breath, I waited as the door opened slowly. A pair of golden feet were the first thing I saw, my eyes rising further and further up, over a pair of strong golden legs, dark shorts, abs to die for, a chest so broad I wanted to sink into it, and then…
No. Fuck. No. Not again.
Not again.
I screamed, then passed the fuck out.