“Ready?”
He spun around to see Eve standing about five feet from him, shuffling her pack around on her back. She ran her hand through her bangs, pushing them out of her face.
“Done already?”
“Not much to see, really.”
“Any sign of her?”
“Olive?”
Who else would I be talking about? “Yes.”
“No sign of her.” Eve looked like she wanted to say more, but didn’t. Instead she turned and started walking down the gravel road.
“Wow.” The word escaped from Eve’s lips unbidden.
“She’s a beauty isn’t she?”
Eve nodded her head, swallowing hard and stared at the Jacksondale plantation in awe. The three-story pier and beam home never ceased to take her breath away with six white marble columns the stretched from ground to the top of the third story. Each level had a magnificent wrap around porch with French doors. The off-white siding was weathered, but overall the house seemed to be in good condition, sitting a quarter of a mile down a winding driveway, it sat on a three hundred acre property. Lush green grass had grown up around it. She sucked in a deep breath reveling in the smell of the thriving meadow, with trees flanking on all sides. The stifling scent of the jenks was absent for the moment and she drank in the fresh air.
A huge pond sat caddy corner to the left side of the house, spreading over what she figured to be more than an acre. She’d seen it from the road when she’d driven by with her parents, but she’d never seen its beauty up close like this before. Even in its overgrown state and weathered condition, the mansion looked like a dream come true.
“Come on. Let’s go in and sweep the place before dark.”
Eve nodded again, never taking her eyes from the porches that seemed endless. She didn’t need to look at the sun to know that they still had about three hours before sun-down.
She shifted her heavy pack on her back. An exhilarating feeling came over her at the thought of all of the valuable things that were probably still inside. At least she hoped they hadn’t all been looted.
“Did you know that this place was built in the 1840’s?”
“No.” Eve brushed her fingertips against the closest marble column as she climbed the flaky wooden steps up onto the porch.
“James Jackson built it for his family when he came into Sunder, of course at the time, it wasn’t called Sunder. Miles Sunder hadn’t even been born yet. James was a cotton farmer.” Gage pulled a knife out of his boot as gripped one of the copper handles on the matching twin doors. Eve followed suit and pulled her Craftsman from her back.
He eased the door open and moved inside. She followed him. Her nose was instantly met with the stifling smell of over-used bleach. Oh, they’re here all right. She shifted her head back and forth, evaluating the entryway of the house while looking for jenks at the same time. The old style of architecture would have taken her breath away if she wasn’t already choking on rotting bleach air.
A large crystalline chandelier hung from the ceiling, glittering in the afternoon sun over black and white checkered tile that gave the room a new age look. A dusty pink couch sat in one corner and large corroded fish tank sat next to it. Other than that, the small room was empty, which was rather disappointing.
“This is lame.”
Gage gave her a look that clearly said shut the hell up.
She shrugged her shoulders as anger speared her like a lance. No one told her what to do. Not anymore. Those days were gone. She spoke louder. “What? I’m not scared of a couple of jenks.”
That was when they came. It sounded like an explosion from behind Eve. She turned around to see three coming out of a splintered wooden door she hadn’t noticed. Each one shuffled toward her with desperate hunger plastered on their gray, sagging faces.
“Urgggggh.” A gravelly moan came from behind her.
“Shit!” Gage yelled.
Eve thrust her Craftsman into the head of the closest jenk, a woman wearing a surprisingly intact pink nightgown. She glanced over her shoulder to see five more coming through the arch they’d been about to pass through. Well, crap.
She jerked her arm backward, removing her bladed screwdriver from the head of the undead woman. She lunged forward and thrust it into the eye of a male jenk only a few feet behind the nightgown lady.
“Fuck!”
Eve spun around to see age trapped between two of the jenks, their rotting corpses less than a yard away from where his back had met the white wall of the room. A wave of panic washed over her. She reached in her bra and jerked out her switchblade clicking it into place and throwing it. She watched it topple end over end through the stale air in the open room. Part of her prayed that it would meet its mark. That’s right, prayed. Something she never did under any circumstances. This was different, though she couldn’t have told anyone why.
She never saw if the sharp blade landed true. An abrasive hand closed over her right arm, which held her Craftsman. The harsh, cracked skin bit into her flesh like needles. She tried to jerk away but the jenk had a tight grip on her. She looked over her shoulder at the infected being to be greeted with the vision of black, rotting teeth snapping at her. Eve shifted her weight, and grabbed her weapon from her captured arm. She crouched down and twirled the bladed screwdriver over her head, slicing into the scalp of the jenk who was trying to make her his dinner.
“Urrrrrrrrg.” He moaned as he snapped at her. She hadn’t swung low enough. The hunk of scalp she removed flew across the room and landed in a matted lump on the floor. The thing snapped at her again, causing her to lose balance, the weight of her pack making her unable to stay in one place. She tumbled back onto her butt and dropped her Craftsman. It clanged against the tile.
Eve kicked her foot out making contact with the jenk’s stomach, but it didn’t help loosen his hold on her arm. He leaned forward, the smell of rotten maggots soaking in bleach overwhelmed her nostrils. The thud of a knife embedding itself in the undead’s brain brought his hunger struggle to an abrupt end. The corpse keeled over on top of her, but the dead weight was only on her a second before Gage hauled it off and jerked the knife out.
“Fuck, thanks for—” The words died in Eve’s throat when a hot hand yanked her to her feet.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Gage yelled. His body towered over hers. She fought the vertigo from being pulled to her feet so quickly.
“Gage—”
“You think this is some sort of game, Eve? You think this is fuck around time?” He moved closer to her. His face only inches away. Black blood had splattered on the side of his face. She took a step back. “You are more than fucking welcome to gamble with your life. More than welcome to put your ass on the line. But not mine.” He took another stepped forward and she mirrored him, moving backward.
She glanced to where her Craftsman laid abandoned on the tile floor. He followed her gaze.
“Oh, you want your weapon? You precious little pry bar? Gonna gut me Eve? Gonna kill me?”
She continued to mirror his steps and was alarmed when her back met the wall. “I told you I don’t do teamwork. Plus, I saved your ass,” she said instead of answering his question.
“Oh ho, that’s right. Too bad it was you that put my life in fucking danger to begin with.” He paused. His vicious gaze raking over her face. “Now answer my question. You want your precious little pry bar so you can gut me?” He ran his hand down her shoulder. An involuntary shiver flittered across her body. “Were you going to shove it through my brain, like one of the gurghs? Send me to hell with the rest of them?” His previously angered yell had turned into a menacing whisper. “What were you going to do Eve?” His hand traveled down her arm and back up in slow smooth strokes. Eve’s eyes fluttered closed. “Or were you going to put it through my heart so I could see your face in the seconds before my brain shut down from lack of blood and oxygen?”
She wanted to shake her head and deny everything, but she didn�
��t. Wasn’t able to. His hot breath against the side of her face started a thrum in her body that she couldn’t explain. It was when she felt his breath against her lips that she opened her eyes. He was breathing hard. The air coming from his mouth in great gasps that made his thick muscular, chest heave.
She opened her mouth, fully intending to say something—what, she wasn’t exactly sure. She never got the chance to find out because his mouth fastened over hers. He pressed her hard against the wall. She opened her lips and he thrust his tongue inside, ravaging her. She kissed him back, letting everything else fall away until it was only him she could see, breathe, feel. His earthy scent consumed her. His hand fisted in her hair, sparking a tingling of pain that zinged pleasure through her body.
He was trying to punish her…and she liked it. His thick erection pressed hard against her hip Eve could feel it pulsing through their threadbare clothing. She gripped his waist with her hands, her fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt.
Gage bit down on her bottom lip and she let out a strangled moan. He thrust his hips against her, causing delicious friction between their bodies. He sucked on the lip he’d bitten down on eliciting a burning response that had liquid flooding to her core.
“Feels so good,” she moaned. He ran kisses along her jaw and up to her ear.
“You’ve threatened me Eve—more than once—and now you’ve put my life in danger.” His whispered words jerked her from the surreal world where only he existed. “I may not know who are.” He quoted her earlier words. “But you don’t know who I am either and I’m not above duct-taping your mouth and hands together until I can get us both to Eden safely. Got it?” A funny feeling hit her. Heat invaded her cheeks. He only kissed me to show me that he could. To show me that he could still wield his power over me.
Eve shoved against his chest. He stepped back, but it really ate at her that he did so because he chose to, and not because she had pushed him.
“Do we have another agreement, Eve?” He was right. She shouldn’t have been running her mouth. She’d let him get under skin and piss her off with only a look. And more than that, he had just done it again, with his kiss. Gage had found her weakness, when she’d thought she had none. She brushed her fingertips against her still tingling lips. His eyes followed the movement. The cold steel of them softened.
“I just want to keep you safe, and I can’t do that if you’re—” She waved his words away with her hand.
“Whatever. Yes, fine.” She stepped around him, forcing herself to look away from his god-like perfection. “I won’t talk loud. I get it. Let’s just case this place and get it over with.” Eve hoped he didn’t hear the way her voice trembled.
Chapter Seven
“It was this set of stairs my brother tripped and fell down when he was nine and I was eight. My mother thought I pushed him, but I didn’t.”
Eve stared at the grand staircase that led from the second floor to the third of the Jacksondale plantation. The tan wooden steps had a trail of dry dark brown liquid on them. A trail that ended at the bottom of the first flight, though whoever ended up on the bottom step hadn’t stayed there—at least not intact. The fleshless bones lay in a dried heap, the gender unknown.
Eve looked over the railing, down into the grand living area on the first floor. Even after their tussle with the jenks and the heated kiss they shared, she had still been floored with the sight that greeted her eyes. She had imagined what the inside of the house would look like a million times and yet her imagination had severely failed.
The vast room was huge, the floors made of a gray stone that complimented the medium wood color of the walls. Leather furniture, the color of rich mahogany sat in the center of the room. A massive stone fireplace was to the left that looked big enough to fit five regular-sized ones inside. Over the fireplace hung the mounted head of a large elk. The spread of its antlers wider than Eve was tall. More animal heads were mounted on the walls of the large square room, deer, a longhorn, a ram, a buffalo, an antelope, a wild boar, and others that Eve didn’t recognize.
The animal heads weren’t what made her imagination pale in its image. It was the sweeping staircase that twisted around the edge of the room, each floor exposed so that anyone on the upper levels could look over the wood railing into the living area. A colossal chandelier hung from the ceiling of the top floor, suspended on a thick silver chain the dark crystalline jewels sparkled in the afternoon sun that shone through curtain-less windows on each floor. The crystals were a grayish color. Not clear like a normal chandelier, but dark and dazzling, drawing the onlooker in. There were so many of them they seemed to go on and on and forever in their glistening perfection. It was the chandelier that held her attention so completely. Even as she climbed the stairs after Gage, helping him check all of the rooms on the second floor, her gaze kept coming back to the glittering fixture.
Eve stepped back from the railing and looked at the chandelier. I bet just one of those crystals is worth a fortune. A plan started to evolve in her head. The fixture which held the great centerpiece must have started to rot or had become weaker over time because the sparkling jewels hung close to the railing of the second floor opposite from where she stood now. She could even bet that if she stood on the railing on that side that she could easily reach out and touch them.
I want one of those jewels. Just like the money from cash drawer—she had to have it. She shifted her weight, hefting her pack. The weight was on the verge of unbearable, but one of those jewels wouldn’t add too much too it. It would be so easy to pull one off…or two.
Her pulse jumped at the thought. She’d hoped there would be valuable things in here, but she didn’t bargain on there being something like that.
“Eve? Did you hear what I said?”
Eve glanced at Gage. His handsome features were still tense, a look that he’d worn since she’d pushed him away. It really irked her, because if anyone had any reason to be tense, it was her. He was the one who kissed her to prove a point.
“You pushed your brother down the stairs.”
His eyes narrowed. “My mom thought I did, but I didn’t. He tripped over his shoe string and fell.” He looked back at the stairs. “He broke both of his arms. He was in casts for months.”
“I remember that.” Living in a small town it was hard to miss things like a boy having two casts on his arms in grade school. She had been jealous at the time. She was only six years old and Collin had had a blue cast and a green one. Everyone signed them. She could remember the chicken scratch designs on each one as he’d walked down the hall. At the time she hadn’t equated them with pain, but the fact that they were cool. Thinking back on it she was glad that something like that hadn’t happened to her.
Her parents would have equated it with the evil sin they swore followed her every step. “God’s way of trying to send you back to hell.” Her mom had said to her once. Such a loving family. The memory of the white cast that had covered her arm tried to push its way to the front of her mind. No. She shoved it away.
“My brother told her I didn’t push him, but I could tell she didn’t believe either of us.”
Eve looked at Gage, taking in his side-profile. Why is he telling me this?
“It was when he got those damned things off that everything changed. No one blamed me after that.”
Eve furrowed her brow and a second later it hit her. “It was breaking his arms that made him so good at baseball, right?” He had been a legend now that she thought about it. She never attended a sports game in her life, it wasn’t allowed, but she remembered the posters with his name on them plastered across the walls when she was a freshman and his brother was a senior.
“His fastest recorded pitch was one-hundred point two miles per hour.”
Eve made a non-committal sound. She didn’t know anything about baseball, but she acknowledged that it was probably pretty fast.
“You don’t think so?”
She looked at Gage, realizing that she ha
d let her gaze wander up to a crack in the dark wood of the floor above her head. “I don’t know anything about sports.”
“Right. I forget.” A look of annoyance passed over his face. He looked away from her and started climbing the stairs again.
“What’s your problem?”
He didn’t respond. Just shook his head and didn’t look back.
“Why did y’all even come here anyway?” She knew why they came. They were one of the elite families in town. It was no secret, but she wanted him to know that she didn’t think much of his former elite status.
“My mom’s second cousin owned this place. He was the great-great-great grandson of James Jackson.”
“Was?” She was being catty; she knew it. She knew that whoever his second cousin was had probably been taken out by the first wave of the undead, but she didn’t like the “duh” quality his voice had taken on. As if it was obvious that he be related to the person who owned this mansion.
“Yes, was.” He turned around at the top of the stairs.
“Guess all this fortune didn’t save him when it really counted, huh?” Eve reached the top step and stood next to him.
“Nope, but he almost got the best of you. You’re lucky I didn’t hesitate to shove a dagger into the brain of my own family member.” He turned around and stalked off, the tension in him making sense. So, his relative was the jenk that almost made her his dinner earlier. The anger he’d shown afterward clicked into place. She looked around her at the massive house.
He hadn’t wanted to go home…but he’d wanted to come here. A place where he spent much of his childhood. He’d given her space at the pathetic mess of her home, the least she could do was give him a little privacy here. Eve almost felt bad for him. Almost.
She didn’t say anything else while they checked out the third floor, many of the rooms were the same as the second floor. Bare, save for some basic necessities. She couldn’t help but wonder where his cousin’s room was. None of these seemed to have had an active tenant in them before the Crave. It all seemed sparse and bare, which was a more disappointing than she wanted to admit.
Alive (The Crave) Page 5
