Page 16 of Savage Blooms (Unearthly Delights #1)
They waited. For five minutes or fifteen, in complete and total stillness, until Adam’s feet began to hurt and the cold started seeping into his bones. Until Adam’s patience was entirely worn through.
“All right, that’s it,” he said. “I’m going in there.”
“You can’t,” Eileen snapped, with a vehemence that surprised him, like she was a mother preventing her toddler from rushing headlong into a busy street.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Finley said, which somehow felt more ominous.
“Why not?” Adam demanded. He had only been here a day, and he was already exhausted by this whole song and dance.
It was obvious that Eileen and Finley were lying to him, or playing some kind of mind game with him, or both.
The sky above him darkened in warning as the sun disappeared behind fast-moving clouds.
“You’re both starting to piss me off, and you won’t explain anything. Why can’t I—”
A sharp, wild wind kicked up out of the cave, gusting cool mist and that scent of rotting sweetness into all of their faces.
Cherry tarts, Adam recalled. The almond flour kind he used to show up early to the campus coffee shop to buy, the kind evoked by that damn-near edible perfume every girl his freshman year was wearing.
It smelled enticing, or more specifically, like enticement itself.
But it also smelled a little bit like death, like the formaldehyde sweetness of a body in a morgue.
The bells on the trees chimed, softly at first, and then louder and louder, as though an invisible hand was shaking them violently.
They no longer sounded cheery, but like a wailing call of distress.
A squall of sea air joined the wind from the cave, kicking up around them as a new storm brewed overhead.
Had there been any clouds in the sky moments ago?
“They know we’re here now,” Eileen said, with a look of terrified awe in her eyes.
Either she was a very good actor or she was just as scared as the rest of them.
Her dark hair fell out of its chignon and whipped around her face, and she had to almost shout to be heard over the wind.
“Do you believe me now, Adam? Can’t you feel it? ”
What Adam felt was electricity, scintillating and hot, coursing through him like he was standing in the middle of a lightning storm.
And he felt a bone-deep pull he couldn’t explain, a need to plunder that cave of all its secrets.
He wanted to be inside it, so badly it hurt, he wanted to be one with that emptiness and see what mysteries it held.
More than he had wanted anything in his entire life, Adam wanted to know.
Adam closed the distance to the cave before anyone could stop him, pausing mere inches from the mouth of darkness.
“No!” Eileen cried, lurching forward. She would have tackled Adam to the ground if Finley, in an impressive show of strength, hadn’t gripped her by the bicep and hauled her backwards.
Nicola stood frozen, the jug of milk dropped to her feet, her hands clapped over her ears, and Adam knew that if he didn’t seize the moment now, he would never have another opportunity.
Adam didn’t really care what going into that cave would prove or disprove. He just wanted to find it out for himself either way.
He thrust his hand into the cave. That darkness was strangely cool, almost vicious. Like he had dipped his fingers into a cold lake and not into thin air.
He opened his mouth to declare that it was fine, that there was nothing to worry about, that he was going to have a look around and come right back.
Then, a long flat tongue lapped against Adam’s palm, just as a hot, humid mouth closed around his wrist and bit down right through the skin.
Adam was so shocked he didn’t even scream.
It was Nicola who screamed, and Finley who hauled Adam back from the cave with his arms looped around the other man’s middle.
Adam gasped for air, staring stunned at the blood trickling from puncture wounds on his hand.
The blood was what shocked him back into awareness, and adrenaline flooded his veins as he tried to break free from Finley’s firefighter hold.
“Leave it,” Finley said, as though he were ordering a dog to drop a bone. The sky overhead darkened rapidly as the bells rattled hard enough to crack. “Just leave it.”
Eileen yanked the Kirkfoyle clan badge from her chest, tearing her sweater in the process, and held it out in front of her like a crucifix. She stood in the gap between Adam and the cave, teeth bared, voice ferocious.
“Not him!” she snarled. “Not this one, do you hear me? This one is mine! Not yours!”
Finley held a hand out for Nicola and she rushed to him, abandoning the jug where it lay. Then Finley began to haul Adam and Nicola back towards the house, away from the strange wind and the shrieking bells and that sickly-sweet smell that enveloped Adam’s senses.
“No,” he said, gritting his teeth through the pain in his throbbing hand.
His mind must be fracturing, coming to pieces in the presence of something that simply was not possible.
He didn’t know what was real, he didn’t even know up from down.
He just knew he couldn’t leave now, when something so scintillatingly impossible had just broken into reality with a bite that also felt like a kiss.
“I want to see. I want to know what’s in there! Don’t make me go.”
In the end, it wasn’t a discussion. Eileen yanked and Nicola pulled and Finley gave Adam a firm shove on the back, and the next thing Adam knew he was half-stumbling down the hillside.
Eileen grabbed Finley’s hand like her life depended on it, and Nicola clutched Adam’s good wrist as they stumbled over stones and heather, two pairs of frightened mortal creatures fleeing an encounter with the supernatural.
Adam’s lungs screamed for air as their jostling turned into a flat-out run once they reached the grazing green. The clouds rolled meanly above them, like they were chasing them down.
No matter how far away from the cave he got, Adam could still feel that ache in his bones, begging him to stay. And through the scent of turned earth and macerated grass, Adam could still smell cherry tarts and longing.
Overhead, the skies cracked open, dousing them with rain.