Page 42 of Truth
Time with her? Forever. At least I hoped so. I hoped we had forever. I prayed to the fates for it to be so, because each moment I spent with her made me thirst for an eternity more. I knew it from the moment we met, and I tried to push the feelings and lust away, but what was the point when everything around us had done nothing but force us closer together?
“If I squint, I think I can see where it turns up ahead.” Sterling answered, his voice sounding as dry as mine felt.
Liberty and Michelle both stopped, tilting their heads at the exact same moment in the opposite directions. Matches. They were a matching pair, and though I hadn’t seen it at first, the more time I spent around them, the more I noticed the similarities that only two halves of a whole could possess. Michelle was the one to speak first, “I don’t see shit. It has to be their vampire night vision.”
“Do they even have night vison?” Liberty whispered back.
Michelle’s shoulders lifted. The fire that hovered over her hand in a painless flame bounced with the movement. “I don’t know. Maybe. It just seems so very vampire-ish.”
“We don’t have special night vision. Just regular good ol’ vision.” I cleared up for them, before adding, “And even my regular vision is beginning to fail me.”
Michelle turned, “Does that mean you age?”
“What? No. Oak’s just always been old.” Sterling answered.
Michelle turned back to her friend, “That’s a shame, I know how much you dig the aging look.”
Liberty sighed, “I guess I must trade in the sexy grey for having five men.”
“That just doesn’t seem like a fair trade.” Michelle responded, and I agreed. She gets five of us, she’s fucking winning. “I’ll mourn your loss with you.”
I blinked a few times, “I’m sorry, what?”
“She’s obviously getting gypped in this situation.” Michelle muttered.
“Female logic.” Sterling groaned, and for once I agreed with him. “Can you just proceed? We are on a time crunch here.”
Shit. The time. I spared a quick glance at my watch, cringing at how much time we wasted just getting in here, and I hoped the others had less of a struggle than we had. As we got closer, I realized that Sterling was correct in his assessment. There was a turn in the tunnel and when we reached it, the ground sloped downward. And the minute we stepped onto the slopping floor, I felt it. I felt the power that loomed ahead. I feared it. Not for me, but for Liberty.
She whimpered; a sound so soft a normal person with average hearing wouldn’t be able to hear it. But we aren’t normal; we are vampires and I could tell that it wasn’t just a whimper of fear, but of pain. Fates help us, I hope she could make it just a few more hours until we got her back to her wolf. But it didn’t seem like the fates would be in our favor. Not on this one.
Sterling nudged me, his eyes wide as he mouthed, “What the hell are we going to do?”
“I don’t fucking know.” I hissed back, ignoring the glare that Michelle was shooting us over her shoulder. She knew she may not have been in on our holy-fuck-this-shit-is-coming meeting, but I know she got the cliff notes. I cleared my throat, “We will handle it when-“
My words were cut off by the floor suddenly giving way under our feet. The stone crumbled, dust billowed in the air, and our bodies fell downward before we could grab anything to stop the movement. We skidded down the slope, our flesh dragging against the pebbles as gravity pulled us downward.
We rolled to a stop, crashing into a solid slate wall. Pain covered my body, the rocks still embedded in my skin oozed blood, and I had to take a moment to gather myself before I could physically lift any part of my body upward. I sat up, fighting the dizziness until it faded before I dared to turn my head and search for the others. Everyone was in equally bad shape, each in different stages of shock.
“That was fucking fun.” Michelle muttered as she tossed a rock she had pulled out of her arm to the ground.
Liberty groaned as she looked at her injuries and a second later, Sterling was at her side, his hand glowing against her skin as he healed her. She leaned in and licked a speck of blood that was trailing down his forehead, and both Sterling and I moaned in unison. That’s what this girl did to us. We could be in danger, fighting for our lives, and still that didn’t stop the want just looking at her caused.
“Focus, people. We have a mission to accomplish here.” Michelle clapped her hand to bring our focus back and pebbles rained down from above. She’s right, of course. We should probably be quieter, not like the sound of rocks falling didn’t already give us away. But it was eerily quiet around us, still. The only light was still shining in the hands of Michelle.
“Something is not right.” The words huffed out, barely audible.
Everyone stopped, all eyes looking around to assess any danger. “Do you hear that?”
We all strained our hearing, trying to figure out what Liberty heard, but nothing. I could hear nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to make me question what lurked in the surrounding darkness. “I hear nothing.”
Her hand found mine and grasped my fingers, a movement she only does if she was scared or needed comfort. “Water. I hear water.”
At first, I heard nothing. Then I heard a slow trickle growing louder by the second, until water poured down the ramp we had just fallen down and pooled at our feet. “Fuck.”
We all tried to scoot back against the wall, but the water kept coming, flowing faster as each second ticked by until our shoes were under water and it lapped against our ankles. Michelle clung to Liberty, Liberty clung to me, and Sterling just stared at the ground like that alone would fix the problem.
“What do we do?” Michelle asked, her voice getting anxious.