Chapter 20 #2
That thing being Nyx’s pleasure. Just thinking about her, about the way she felt, her head thrown back, hair trailing down…
“You have to get better at controlling your dick, man.” Talon laughs, and I throw a stick in his direction. I don’t like that the vampire can tell when I’m turned on. At least, not outside the context of last night.
“Whatever,” I tease back. Talon finds the last stick we need for the torches and adds it to the pile in my hands, and we start back in the direction of the cave.
When he first joined the team, I’d worried, as Thorian did, that Talon might have been a spy. A mercenary. I don’t feel that way anymore.
“You really see it going any other way?” I ask, glancing at him when we near the cave. He glances over at me, easily following the thread of conversation, then shrugs once more.
“Eh, maybe we get picked off by the warlocks.”
I knock into him with the sticks, and he rolls his eyes at me. “Okay, fine, yes, I want to do the whole marriage and family thing too, alright? But, in your words, I’m not going to be such a pussy about it.”
My cheeks flame. “I’m not a pussy, I’m just a man who knows what he wants. Women think that’s hot… I heard.”
Talon laughs. “How many women have you been with?”
Two. “Enough.”
“You’re a single digit man. I can tell.”
My cheeks burn. “I’ve had hundreds of lovers.”
“Hundreds,” he says, while choking on a laugh.
I could melt into the ground. “All well-pleased and begging for more.”
“Begging for more,” he repeats, tears stinging his eyes.
We reach the entrance to the cave and find Thorian and Nyx there. I’m glad for the break from the conversation. I was about to start making up names of moves I’m really good at in bed.
He’d see right through that.
Thorian glances up. “We’ve got the animal fat. Let’s start assembling these.”
We make quick work of the torches. When they're done, Thorian takes one and lights it, holding it out in front of him, while the rest get strapped to the outside of my pack, handles secured and angled outward so they won't be difficult to reach.
I adjust the straps across my shoulders, settle the weight, and nod.
“The unknown is supposed to be exciting, not make you feel like you have to shit your pants,” Talon says.
Nyx laughs. “Need a few minutes behind the bush?”
Talon rolls his shoulders. “Nah, I made the deliberate decision to stay constipated during this competition.”
It makes me laugh, but my shoulders don’t relax.
At least when crossing the bridge, I knew what I was in for.
I’d come up with the plan to cut it when I saw Thorian wrap the chains around his arms on his way over.
I’d thought it would be a good way to keep the other teams from following us, from using the lightning rod to their advantage.
Then I talked myself out of it, only for it to become necessary when they started attacking me.
Going into the cave now feels worse than that. The lack of information is the worst part. Whatever is in there… we won’t know until it’s on us.
But, I suppose that’s why most people are afraid of the dark. The unknown.
"Come on," Thorian says, our fearless leader forcing us ahead. "Someone take the rear. We're going in before we get some sort of poisonous abomination sent after us."
The dark comes immediately after the first turn, absolute and total, pressing in from every direction except the small radius of orange light the torch throws around us.
It's not like being outside at night, where there's always some ambient softness, some give to the darkness.
This is a different thing entirely. Solid.
Intentional. A darkness that makes you aware of your own breathing, that makes every sound feel too loud and too close.
The drip of water somewhere ahead. The scrape of our boots on stone.
The way the torch flickers when the air shifts, throwing shadows that move in ways that make the periphery of the cave feel populated.
The walls are close enough that I can reach out and touch them without fully extending my arm.
The ceiling dips and rises unpredictably, and the floor is uneven beneath our feet, slick in places with moisture, rough and jagged in others.
The air smells of cold stone and deep earth and something older than either.
It sits heavy in the lungs, damp and mineral.
We walk for what feels like hours, though I know it isn't.
Then Talon lets out a low, amused sound.
"What?" Thorian asks from the front, his voice tight and barely above a whisper.
"Look up," Talon says.
We all do, in tandem, and the breath goes out of me.
The ceiling is alive with crystals. They catch the torchlight and fracture it into a thousand shifting points, seeming almost to drip from the rock above us, growing down from the stalactites in clusters and formations that have no business being this far underground.
In the glow of the single torch they flicker and pulse, like something breathing.
I've always been more of a flora and fauna kind of man. But even I have to admit this is extraordinary.
“I wish Ivor could see this,” Nyx whispers, and I reach back, catching her hand and squeezing it. She squeezes back, and I let go, hoping for her sake that her servant is still around by the time we make it out of the Trials.
We start to move forward again and Thorian stumbles, letting out a slight curse. Talon does the same and I glance back at the vampire, finding sweat beading along his hair line, glinting in the light of the fire.
“What is it?” I ask, sensing something is wrong.
“Nothing,” Thorian says, while Talon grunts, like he can’t quite clear his throat.
“Not feeling great,” Talon admits, tugging at his collar and glancing up at the crystals. “I’ve felt this way before, around crystals. Some of them…leech power.”
“So us powerless people have nothing to worry about,” Nyx jokes, but it doesn’t quite land. I don’t need to inform everyone that it’s a bad thing for our two strongest members to be waning in this cave.
“Great,” Thorian mutters, turning around and holding his torch slightly lower than before. “Just—”
But he cuts off when a scream sounds from somewhere deep in the cave system, echoing out and toward us, as though repeating over and over itself. We all freeze, and I run the sound through my mind, trying to match it with any of our competitors.
It sounded, for all the world, like the scream of a woman.
But the only other woman is that shifter, and wouldn’t the wolves have been in their canine forms for this?
Thorian gestures for us to continue moving. Voices echo, though they’re so quiet it’s hard to tell if they’re real or imagined words and sentences or just the scrape of our boots along the ground.
There’s another scream, and this time, Nyx reaches for my hand, holding tight. Her breath comes faster, and we walk tighter together.
The screams layer atop one another, like a haunting melody.
“What is that?” Talon ventures, his voice deathly quiet.
So, I’m not the only one thinking those screams might not be coming from our competitors after all.
“I’m not sure,” Thorian says, his voice lacking its usual edge. “But whatever it is, we need to be ready.”
I try to be ready, try to work through my mind and figure out what the noises could be, if not the other groups. But the only thing I feel is deeply unsettled.
Someone, or something, is down here with us… and it means trouble.