by Emma Dawn
I swallowed hard. “Ivan won’t understand. Will he?”
He frowned. “He wants to let you rest for two days between challenges so you have as much strength as possible. Your ability to manipulate this world is good, but it seems to deplete you,” he said and we both looked across to where the other three were arguing, their voices raised over the crackle of the flames. I swallowed hard again.
“Do you trust me?”
“Strangely enough, yes.” He leaned in and kissed me gently. “But I’d prefer not to die again if I’m being honest.”
“How did you die?”
He pursed his lips. “I can’t tell you. None of us can. You have to go in blind, as it were.”
Of course, he couldn’t. “I’m going to head to the edge of the fire light. If they ask, I’m going to relieve myself.”
“You don’t have to do that here anymore than you have to eat,” he said.
“Then we are going to have to run for it.”
I let him go and brushed my clothes off, knocking the cloak off while I did so. The wind caught it and sent it up in a swirl that acted like a cover between Ivan, Liam, and Torq and me and Jessop.
Jessop caught my hand and yanked me to the left. We ran while behind us came a snarl and shouting.
“Damn it, Jessop!” Ivan roared from behind us.
The footing here was rough, rocky, hard, and dangerously unbalanced as we leapt from outcrop to outcrop. The ice and snow began to melt and the rocks turned slippery. Slippery?
A splash caught my ears and then there was no more shouting behind us, it was just gone from one second to the next, and along with it, the cold of the mountain evaporated. A sudden heat was shocking, and intense even though it was still night out. Good thing, too, considering Jessop was a vampire.
“Oh, shit. The sun?” I asked.
“Something like that. We need cover fast.” He held a hand out to me and we made our way across what I could see were the rocks on the breaker of a beach. Sand and surf called to me and I took a deep breath of the salty air.
“I love the water,” I said.
“Well, me not so much.” Jessop tightened his hold on me. “Wait, get down.”
We dropped into a crouch and it was only then I saw the figures coming along the beach. They scuttled like crabs only they were the size of horses.
“What the freaking hell are those?” the words escaped me in a rushed hiss. Jessop clamped a hand over my mouth and pulled me even lower onto the rocks. The barnacles and rough edges of the rocks cut into the palms of my hands, but I barely noticed, I was so focused on what I was seeing in front of me.
The creatures—giant crabs, I corrected myself—scuttled their way closer and closer. Black shells shone in the moonlight and giant dark red pincers looked like they were edged in teeth. A part of me wondered if this was even the real world. I mean, I’d never seen crabs like that in all my binge sessions of National Geographic. I think I’d remember pony sized crabs who had pincer claws filled with teeth.
Jessop slowly removed his hand from my mouth. “Those are partially to blame for my death.”
“Wonderful.” First a Morloosh, now big assed crabs. I grinned. “I’d prefer to eat crabs over catching them.”
Jessop snorted and a laugh slipped out of him. “I agree. Come on.”
“Wait, where do you think you’re going?”
He turned and looked at me. “Your choice of where to take Mars did not turn out so well.”
I stared at him. “I disagree. He didn’t die by the Morloosh.”
Jessop frowned. “You think that makes a difference?”
I nodded and turned away from him, searching for something specific. There was no explaining what I was feeling. Like the ability to manipulate this world, I just knew that it was important that their deaths were different this time around. “Yes, I do. Now come on. I think I have a way out of here.”
With great care, I shimmied down the rocks, letting the lay of the land guide me until I was at the water’s edge. I slipped into the water, treading carefully. I rolled to look up at Jessop.
He stared down at me. “I really do hate the water.”
I reached up a hand for him, concern flooding me. “Can you swim?”
He nodded, his eyes crinkled around the edges, “But I hate it.” With a sigh, he slid into the water next to me, taking my hand for a moment. I gave it a squeeze.
“It will be okay. I have a plan.”
I swam parallel to the shoreline focused on the task at hand and the boat I saw anchored on the far side of the beach. Because if I could just stay focused then I wouldn’t think about Mars falling to his death.
About Kessler’s beautiful green eyes darkening as he became a grawk. God, what if Mars became a grawk too?
My salty tears bled into the ocean, filling it a little more. As we swam, the waves tugged harder on my limbs, I turned to see Jessop behind me, his face bobbing above the water.
“So, drowning isn’t how you died, right?” I asked as he caught up to me. I needed to be sure.
He grunted. “No. I would never willingly go in the water like this. A water death is how I died becoming a vampire.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.” I wanted to reach over to him but we had to keep moving, had to keep swimming.
Something brushed against my leg and I yanked my feet up to my chest with a flexibility I didn’t realize I had until that moment.
Jessop looked over at me, then past me. “Swim faster, but swim quietly.”
“Oh, God.” I did not want to hear that. He didn’t say the word, that word that had me freaking out whenever I thought about it when I was out swimming in the ocean. Big mouth, big teeth, torpedo shaped bodies. Too many horror movies for my own good had my imagination flying all in the wrong direction.
Moving as fast, but as silently as I could, I put all my efforts into getting to the shore now, screw the boat. Screw the crab things, we could outrun them. There was no way we could outrun anything swimming underneath us.
I was bumped again on the thigh and I squeaked and couldn’t help the splash as I flailed harder to get moving faster. Jessop probably could have beaten me to the shore, I could tell he was holding back. But he stayed at my side. Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed my arm. I gasped, expecting him to go under, for a dark sleek body with a large fin attached to it to come over top of him. My mind raced ahead to the possibilities in a way I didn’t like.
But none of that happened. He tightened his hold on my arm and smiled. “Put your feet down.”
I let my feet come forward and the touched sand and rocks. A sigh of relief flooded through me but Jessop didn’t let me slow. He hauled me up out of the water as a splash sounded behind us. I didn’t look back but I could feel the creature coming closer, driving toward us for one last shot at taking a bite, for dragging us under the water.
I fell forward as we hit the shore and twisted around to see not a dark bodied shark swim away, but something equally or maybe even more terrifying. Tentacles wove through the air and began to pull themselves up out of the water. Toward us. I pushed backward, driving my heels into the sand which gave way with each shove.
“Here.” Jessop grabbed my hand and together we scrambled up and out of harm’s way, running for the edge of the beach that met up with a thick jungle. Leaping and pushing our way through the bush, we didn’t stop until the sound of the surf had receded to barely a buzz in our ears.
Jessop leaned against a tree and I stood with my hands on my thighs. “Okay, just where are we? This can’t be like the real world. Can it?”
“Most people don’t see the supernatural. It’s just not in their brains to comprehend it. This is an island deep in the south Pacific that is uninhabited by humans. The islands around it have people, but they view this island as cursed and refuse to come here. You can’t find it on any map.” He brushed his hair back from his face and I stared at him.
“When did you die?”
“Many y
ears ago. I ended up stranded here after a ship wreck,” he said. “I was wounded and the crabs caught me and pulled me apart. I lived a long time through it—or at least until the sun rose. Vampires are hard to kill.”
I put my hands to my mouth, horror flickering through me. “Then we have to get off the island. We have to.”
“We need to rest first.” His eyes flicked to me and then down my leg. “Shit, you’re hurt.”
I looked at my leg, not feeling what he meant. But there it was, a huge gash in my thigh that bled freely.
“I don’t feel it.” And I didn’t, but my head suddenly grew light and fluffy like it would float away if it weren’t attached by my neck. Jessop jumped toward me and caught me as I slumped to the leaf-littered ground. The forest around us seemed to close in on me, and I shut my eyes to block it out.
“Stay with me, Rose. Stay with me.” His voice was soft and distant and I tried to hang onto it. I had to. We were in trouble. I knew we were. Those crab things could come back.
His hands were on my thigh and I felt some squeezing and then a sharp prick like a pair of needles. Was he stitching me up? I struggled to open my eyes and the world was completely out of focus. I reached up for Jessop’s face. “I see two of you.”
“Yeah, that’s not good.” His hand went under my legs and my back and he picked me up like I weighed nothing. There was no sense of time as we walked through the forest. I wondered just where he thought we were going. He’d said there were no people here, no chance of rescue from someone else.
“Rose,” he shook me in his arms, bringing my attention back to him, “I know it’s hard, but I need you to make us a shelter. Can you do that? Can you bend the world and make us a place that’s safe from the crabs?”
I didn’t know about bending the world but I did know that I didn’t want to be on the ground. Which meant the only kind of shelter I wanted would be high up in a tree. I was staring straight up at a massive tree that was at least forty feet around the trunk. That would be big enough for sure.
“Hurry, Rose.” Jessop’s voice was strained and I didn’t think it was because he was holding me up. There was a scuttling in the underbrush and it was coming closer.
I imagined a giant tree house, one that had walls and netting to keep the bugs out, but floors and blankets, soft bedding, and maybe even clean clothes. Near the top of the tree the world seemed to shimmer and waver as my mind made me what I wanted.
“Rose, hurry!” Jessop whispered.
I pointed up as a rope and platform dropped. A pulley system he could use to get us to the top.
“Brilliant, girl.” He laid me on the platform and grabbed the rope. I laid on my side, watching the giant crabs scuttle toward us, their claws clicking and snapping as if they’d cut us in half. Which probably wouldn’t be that hard with those teeth tipped claws. Their bodies glittered in the dark of the moonlight and I wondered just how long it would be until the sun rose. Because that would present a problem for Jessop. I knew it would. The view changed as Jessop pulled us up out of reach of the crabs.
Almost.
The bottom of the platform rattled as they jammed the tips of their claws into it and tried to pull us back down.
Jessop snarled as he held onto the rope in a veritable tug-of-war for our lives. Our lives, not just his, not just mine. I thought about what would make a crab run for its life. What would scare it.
A bird. I reached out to the tip of the claw that jammed through the platform, by my head and put my hand on it. “Birds, thousands of birds,” I whispered.
The claw jerked away, releasing itself and we shot into the air. Jessop worked fast, getting us to the top only seconds later. He tied off the rope and secured the platform to the rest of the treehouse.
“Rose, when you go all out, you go all out.” He scooped me up and walked us into what I’d created.
Chapter Nine
A Treehouse Made for Two
The treehouse I’d seen in my head was exactly what had come to life for me, at least the bits and pieces I could see through my eyes partially squinted shut. The floors were tiger striped wood, the walls were solid, and over the windows was a thick netting that would keep the bugs out. There was a massive bed on one side of the place that was just the mattress, no frame, and around it was strung more netting, little glowing lights and candles hung from the ceiling.
“Fairy princess,” I murmured.
“You wanted a fairy princess treehouse?” He laughed, but it wasn’t mean at all. “Well, you got it, sweetheart. You got it in spades.”
There was a dining table and chairs set up and he strode to it, laying me on the table. “I’m going to have to cut your clothes off to see if you have any other wounds—”
I beat him to it, imagining my clothing melting off like I did in the mountain with Mars.
Jessop grunted as though I’d hit him. “Well, that’s one way to do it.” His hands swept over me with the precision of a doctor. I must have muttered the word.
“No, I’m not a doctor, never was. But I’ve been in a lot of battles in my life and learned to stitch my friends back together.” His hands pinched over the wound in my thigh and I squirmed under the pressure of his fingers. “Sorry, Rose. This is not going to be pleasant no matter how I do it. I have to stitch this wound closed and then there is a smaller one on the back of your calf.”
Both times I’d been bumped in the water then, I’d not been bumped, but tasted?
I groaned and flipped an arm over my face which was about as much energy as I could muster. “Just do it.”
There was the sound of his jacket coming off and I felt the whoosh of air from the movement of him throwing it down. Then his hands were back on the wound in my thigh. “Here we go.”
The first press of the needle was a double hit. Two needles at once? What was this madness? I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep the whimper trapped in my throat. It took me a few moments of breathing slowly, of letting the pain go through me that I realized he wasn’t stitching me closed with a real needle or even two needles.
Two fangs . . .he was stitching me closed somehow with his mouth.
I lifted my arm and glanced down. His head was at my thigh and I clamped my eyes shut. Nope, I did not need to see this, as long as it got the job done.
“How is that working, exactly?” I blurted the words out.
He paused. “My teeth and mouth have anti-coagulants embedded in them. It’s not pretty, but I can practically close any wound.”
I threw my arm back over my eyes. “I trust you. It’s just a bit weird.”
He smiled—I felt his mouth against my thigh—and then he kissed my knee. “That one is all done. The calf wound will be quick and then you can rest.”
Jessop helped me turn over on my side so he could get at my leg easier.
That same strange sensation of double needles ensued, but it was over much quicker than before. A shiver ran through me.
“You’re going into shock. I need to get you warm.”
He rubbed a warm cloth over both wounds, cleaning them quickly and then he scooped me up into his arms once more. I stared up at him, and maybe he was right, maybe shock was setting in.
“I really like you, Jessop.”
He grinned down at me, his fangs playing peekaboo through his lips. “I really like you too. But don’t even think it.”
“Think what?” I batted my eyelashes up at him. His grin widened and those soft brown eyes of his sparkled and danced with humor.
“You know, I think you may be dangerous,” he said.
His words cooled whatever shock induced ardor I had running through my veins. “Don’t say that.”
Jessop laid me on the bed and pulled the cover around me. The sheets were cool and did nothing to warm me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean like that.”
“How did you mean?” I was peeking over the edge of the covers. His white button down shirt was rumpled, the cuffs rolled up and stained with my blood, and
his hair was all mussed.
“It’s complicated, Rose. When you are here in the challenges, you have all the needs you would have in the real world. Food, water, sleep. It’s part of the challenge.”
That made sense. I mean it was a challenge after all. “So that makes me dangerous?”
“It means that every challenge is going to get harder, and adding sex to the mix is . . .even more dangerous.”
He looked exhausted. I flipped the covers back. “Get in. I’m cold and you’re tired.”
“I have to find a place where the sun can’t reach me.” He glanced over his shoulder at the open windows that faced the water.
With the last of my energy, I imagined the tree house becoming impenetrable to the sun, except for a few air vents. The walls groaned and shifted and the darkness closed in around us with nothing more than the twinkling lights above the bed and the candles placed along the edge of the room to hold the darkness at bay.
I closed my eyes and the bed shifted as he slid in beside me, his body against mine. I rolled over and curled myself against his chest. I fell into a shock induced slumber as my body warmed next to his, as his heat chased away the shadows of what seemed to be following me.
My dreams were mottled with death and fear . . .my whole life seemed to have been one disaster after another, one moment of chaos only to leap into the next. My crappy family, bad jobs, shitty boyfriends, the car wreck, losing Kessler and Mars and now this, this place that wanted to take Jessop from me too.
I woke up with tears on my face, streaking my skin and dripping onto Jessop’s chest.
“Are you in pain?” His hands swept up my back to cup my face. In the dim light, I could see the concern etched into his face, the true care in those beautiful brown eyes. The truth bubbled out of me.
“I slept with Mars and then he was killed, Jessop. Vincent told me not to sleep with any of you, but . . .Mars told me that there is only today this moment. That there is nothing guaranteed to us and I agree with him. But I don’t want to have anyone else hurt or die because I’m being selfish. I don’t want to hurt you, Jessop.”
