Chapter 42
NICK
The bottles of wine were down in the cellar. Nick hesitated at the top of the steps, staring down into the darkness. But there was nothing there now. Couldn’t be. Alex had sent Blaise packing, hadn’t she? The idol was on the other side of the wall. It could rot there in the darkness.
He shook his head. He was letting all this get to him. It was just the cellar. He didn’t like the place but he had been down there a thousand times. It was creepy and dark. Nothing more. With everything that had happened, he was a bit shaken. Chambers was gone.
He made his way down the steps and reached for the nearest wine bottle.
There was a rush of wind from behind him, a foul miasma, and he spun around, staring back up into the light.
Something fell from the lintel of the doorway up above him, twigs and old dried reeds and straw scattering like chaff.
The charms collapsed, one after the other, all the way down the steps, fragments raining down. Darkness fell with them.
A shadow stretched down the steps, filling the doorway, cutting off the light from the kitchen. The solitary bulb down here flickered and died, while the dark shape loomed over him, misshapen and huge. Nick’s breath caught in his chest as if a vice had just closed around his ribs and tightened.
He stared up at it, his way out blocked, the step hidden from view by this thing. He felt rather than saw it smile, bare its fangs, and reach for him, claws sinking into his skin.
‘Wild thing…’ it hissed. He could feel its breath on his face, cold as the grave, older…
darker… ‘Not much of a guardian, are you? More like a monster. Why not let yourself be wild? It’s what you want, after all.
Why not take what you want? No one could stop you.
Give in to your nature. Be what you were always meant to be. ’
The bottle slid from his numb hand, crashing onto the floor and shattering. The violent noise broke the spell. Nick jumped back with a strangled cry,
And the shape at the foot of the steps was gone.
Nick cursed, fixing his mind on the trees and all the protection they could offer.
But the echo of that other voice was still there, in his blood, in his core. A pulse that would not be dismissed, working its way through him.
Wild thing…
‘Nick?’
Shit, that was Alex’s voice. She was up there in the kitchen, looking for him. How long had he been down here? It had felt like only a minute or so but Wildewood Hall played tricks. He could have been standing there like a statue for hours fighting off whatever entity still lurked down here.
He shook himself back to reality.
‘Just a sec,’ he called up. ‘Don’t come down. I dropped the bottle. Broken glass everywhere.’
Alex peered down from the light of the kitchen.
He couldn’t let her come down here.
Why not take what you want?
‘Are you okay?’
‘Sure,’ he lied. He wasn’t. He really wasn’t.
Things were already spiralling out of control again.
So soon. He felt sick. He was a monster, deep down inside, and something was calling it forth.
‘Fine. I just need to clear this up. Sorry.’ He tried to make his voice firm and unshaken.
Not terribly well but convincingly enough.
‘Why not go back to the drawing room where it’s warm?
I’ll only be a few minutes. I just need the dustpan and brush and… ’
And they were up there, with her.
‘Here,’ she said, as if reading his mind. She took a step forward but he held up a hand.
‘Throw it down,’ he said and she obeyed, tossing them down the stairs to him. He tried to snatch them out of the air, missed, lost his balance and brought his knee down straight onto a jagged shard.
His curses were even louder this time and his head swam. Not with pain exactly but with awareness of the blood in the air. And laughter. There was laughter all around him. Mocking, echoing, taunting. The dustpan and brush clattered onto the floor beside him, useless.
‘Nick!’ Alex cried out in alarm.
‘Stay up there,’ he roared, aware that she was already moving, her feet on the cold stone steps, heedless of the danger to body and soul. ‘Alex, don’t!’
She stopped, three steps up from him, and slowly retreated backwards, her eyes wide with alarm. Thank all that was sacred.
Moving faster than he should have given he was bleeding and in pain, he swept the broken glass into the pan and left it there. He’d sort it out later. Instead, he grabbed another bottle and bounded up the steps, intercepting her before she could think of going down there herself.
White-faced and shocked, Alex was leaning against the table and simply staring at him, her hands gripping the wood, as if she was about to haul herself up on it to escape him.
He slammed the door to the cellar closed and locked it.
The ancient warding was scattered all over the floor, pulled apart, little more than dried straw and fragments of flowers now.
It was an old one. A powerful one, he had thought, the kind made by one of the wise women of Kilfayne long ago, which Sally had added to each year, refreshing it, giving it new life.
And now it was broken. All the smaller ones too.
Bastard. The absolute bastard.
Nick should have known better. He should have never let his guard down. He was an idiot. More than an idiot.
He’d been distracted. He had thought they were safe with Chambers gone, that it was over. That the statue was just a statue.
‘You’re bleeding,’ Alex gasped.
He could smell it, coppery in the air, almost taste it, rather than feel the cut. Not good. That was not good. He’d just bled in the cellar. On ancient stones, in the presence of the very thing Chambers had worshipped. That was never good.
‘Here.’ He held out the bottle of wine like it was some kind of trophy. He hadn’t even looked to see what it was. But she had wanted a drink so he’d gone to get her a drink and now…
His head swam again. That surge of anger came from somewhere else. He was sure of it.
‘Are you scared?’ a voice whispered. And there was a laugh. A bitter, taunting laugh. It sounded like Chambers. But not entirely. It sounded like something else as well. Like a chorus. ‘Coward. They owe you. The de Wildes. She owes you.’
Alex grabbed the bottle and put it down on the table, ignoring it completely.
‘Sit down,’ she told him. ‘Let me see to that. Do you have a first aid kit?’
‘Under the sink,’ he said, grudgingly, hardly able to form the words. A first aid kit wasn’t going to help him now. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to curl up and hide in the darkness until everything went away. He wanted… dear gods, he wanted… his eyes fixed on her… he wanted…
She pulled out one of the chairs and for a moment he thought she would just manhandle him into it if he didn’t comply.
It felt like someone shoved him from behind.
Nick limped to the seat and sank into it while Alex fetched the first aid kit. The lower part of his left jeans leg was dark with blood and a jagged piece of glass protruded from the material. He winced as he looked at it.
Alex knelt down in front of him, her head bowed. ‘Okay, hold on for a moment.’
And before he knew what she was doing, she’d pulled the glass out. The blood came faster now, pumping out. She slid her hand up his leg, assessing, and pressed hard above the wound to try to staunch the flow.
‘You’ll have to take them off,’ she said so matter-of-factly.
His jeans. Right. Of course. They weren’t loose enough to push up. And if they were going to check out the cut, she needed access. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath. There was so much blood.
But it was Alex asking. Alex on her knees in front of him. He swallowed hard and a wave of pain and dizziness swept through him. That voice again, that urge, Chambers, not Chambers…
‘Why not take what you want?’
No. Just no. There was nothing erotic about this.
‘Isn’t there? Blood and sex and the wild urge… Give in to it.’
She was waiting. If he left it any longer, she looked like she would do it for him and he couldn’t stand that.
He’d lose himself completely if she touched him there.
He fumbled with the fly and shifted, standing up a little, so he could drop his jeans to his ankles.
This was not how he had imagined this. Not in the slightest.
And he had imagined it… God help him, he had. In the night, in the morning, in the trees, from the first moment he saw her…
He wanted…
He was painfully aroused. He really shouldn’t be but he couldn’t disguise it. Folding his arms across his lap didn’t help. Neither did trying to distract his mind and body with thoughts of the estate accounts…
An ocean of numbers wouldn’t help right now.
A cruel laugh echoed around his head and he screwed his eyes shut, tilting his face up to the ceiling in despair.
But Alex just ignored him, intent on the injury. Dear gods, he prayed she hadn’t noticed.
Alex cleaned the cut, the antiseptic making him wince. But while the cut had bled initially, it wasn’t deep and it had already stopped by the time she’d finished.
‘There,’ she said, pressing a plaster to the wound – a pitifully small cut really to bleed so much – and smiled up at him.
For a moment he thought he would do anything for that smile. Anything at all. The wild need eased off, the edge softening suddenly, and the scent of flowers wound itself around him again, the wild winding surrounding him, protecting him again. Just like Sally.
‘All done,’ she went on. Her hand brushed his thigh as she got up, sending shudders of need through him. Her touch… oh fuck, he needed her touch…
He tugged up the jeans again as quickly as he could and fastened them, taking care to turn away from her as he did so.
This was not going in any way like he had imagined. Nothing about Alex was how he imagined.
‘Right, wine,’ she said, pleased with herself, and grabbed the bottle again, heading off back to the drawing room.
And God help him, all he could do was follow, like a predator with a scent.