“Except for that,” Heather pointed to the sides of the cave where jagged stalactites of Bluestone stuck out from the cave walls like thousands of blue knives.
Nate’s eyes widened. “Holy crap.”
“You know what we need? A chainsaw. Why didn’t anyone think to bring a chainsaw?” Heather bit at her nails.
“Next time.” Nate pointed at Tristan. “Make a note, dude. Tracking devices and chainsaws.”
She stepped forward. “I’ll go first.”
Tristan made a face. “Like hell you will.”
“Excuse me? I’m the only semi-immortal here. If I die, I’ll come back to life.”
Nate said, “Unless, of course, the caves do negate all immortality, in which case, you’re actually just mortal right now so dying could be, you know, permanent.”
Damn.
Scarlet hadn’t thought of that.
“Why don’t we all go in together in a line? If we keep hacking and sawing away, we can probably make it to the other side as a group,” Gabriel said. “I’ll lead the way and we can put Nate and Heather behind me, then Scarlet and Tristan. That way we’ll have two decent hackers in the front and two in the back.”
“And the weak, crazy girl who can’t defend herself in the middle,” Heather said dryly.
“With a machete,” Tristan said.
A commotion behind them had everyone turning around to see a group of Ashmen charging down the tunnel with their weapons raised.
“How did they get in here?” Heather asked.
“Raven.” Scarlet said. “We have to make it through the vines before they reach us.”
Everyone lined up and, one by one, they walked into the moving wall of death with their enemies right behind them.
***************
Tristan held a knife in each hand as he followed Scarlet into the vines. As a team, they slashed at the snaking thorns and, for the first few feet, were successful. But the wall was thicker than they anticipated and Tristan was soon hacking like a madman just to keep up with the vines Scarlet had hacked a moment earlier.
The Ashmen were getting closer and would soon be entangled in the vines with them. The last thing Tristan wanted to do was fight off rogue plants and dead minions at the same time.
Faster and faster he sliced, blue-tipped thorns cutting into his skin as the vines slithered against him and Scarlet. She slashed at the tendrils lashing out from the walls while Tristan focus on the vines at their feet. The group was slowly separated by rivers of snaking green and forced in different directions.
The first few Ashmen entered the vines.
Like the tentacle of a green monster, a dark vine wrapped around Scarlet’s torso and yanked her toward the wall of Bluestone spikes. Tristan swung his blade through the monster, freeing her just as her body reached the spikes.
They hacked their way through the green current, Ashmen gaining on them by the second.
What were the Ashmen after? Raven had the map. What more did she want?
Tristan could no longer see Gabriel, Nate or Heather as the vines knit together more densely, as if sewing them inside. Which would just be perfect.
He and Scarlet reached the end of green web and were soon free from the thorny vines and standing in another glowing blue cave. Alone.
“Hello?” Scarlet called.
“Scarlet?” came Heather’s voice from somewhere on the other side of the cave wall. “Are you out of the vines?”
“Yeah. Where are you guys?”
“We’re out, too. There must have been more than one tunnel on the other side,” Nate called.
“What should we do?”
Gabriel said, “We have to move forward separately. The Ashmen will reach the edge of the vines any minute.”
“According to the map,” Nate said, “the cave you two are in will lead down a few miles and intersect with our cave at a fork in the tunnels. So when you come to a fork, stop. Got it?”
“Got it.”
The dense vines suddenly tightened, sliding against one another until they were a solid mass. They stopped moving, forming a solid barrier between the tunnels. Like a thick, green door.
“Well.” Scarlet sighed. “At least the Ashmen won’t be getting out of that anytime soon. If ever.” She made a face at the scratch marks on her arms. “Agh. These sting.”
Tristan looked down at his own cuts. “Yeah, but at least they’re shallow.”
“Well.” She exhaled and held up her knife.“Ready for more cave fun?”
He cocked his head. “Have I mentioned how badass you look with a dagger in your hand?”
She smirked. “Not for a few hundred years.”
“Well, I like seeing you with weapons.” He smiled as they started down the tunnel. “Even if those weapons are mine and in the trunk of your car because you’re stealing them from me.”
“Borrowing,” she corrected. “I had every intention of returning them to you and, if you think about it, I sort of did. Since, you know, all the bloodstained weapons in the shack are yours.” She grinned.
This felt good. Walking next to her without either of them being afraid, conversing like time hadn’t bruised them both.
This was living; here in the dark caves where they were mortal and time was precious; here, life had meaning.
“Yes,” he said. “It was very thoughtful of you to leave all my weapons hidden in a cellar six states away from me.”
“Well now they’re right next door.” She paused. “Why are they right next door? How is it that you happened to build your cabin on the same piece of land as mine?”
He shrugged. “I felt you there. After you left New York, I followed you—
“Of course.”
“And I could feel that you were somewhere in the forest by the cabin, but since you told me not to find you I didn’t. The next day, I felt you start to die…” He cleared his throat. “I couldn’t get to you fast enough. And after you were gone, I just…didn’t want to leave. The Avalon forest was important to you for some reason, so I made it important to me.”
She tilted her head. “I woke up in the Avalon forest last time. Right next to your cabin, actually.”
“I know,” he said. “I was there.”
She stopped walking. “You were?”
He nodded. “You couldn’t see me, but I was there the whole time. I wanted to make sure you were safe, even though I didn’t want you to remember me.”
“Which was lame of you. Amnesia really sucks.”
“Well after we get to the fountain, you’ll never have amnesia again.” He smiled.
No amnesia. No curse. Just life.
Her eyes looked pained for a moment and she nodded. “Right.”
A thread of unease slid through him.
“What the…?” Scarlet squinted up ahead as the sound of rushing water met their ears.
Their tunnel ended at an underground river. Its lightning-fast current swept through and around a sucking whirlpool, before dropping into a waterfall that cascaded into miles of darkness.
And the only way to get to the continuing tunnel on the other side was to cross the dangerous rapids.
“It seems to me,” Tristan said, “that the Fountain of Youth doesn’t want to be found.”
“You think?” Scarlet stared at the raging waters. “What should we do?”
“Swim?”
“That’s your idea? Swim through the deadly whirlpool-waterfall combo?”
“What do you propose we do? Fly?”
“Well, flying would be rad,” she said.
He looked at the river. “It’s not very wide. If we run and jump, we can probably make it halfway across the river before we’d have to start swimming.”
“What about the whirlpool?”
“Yeah.” He scratched his jaw. “That might be tricky.”
Tristan slid his backpack off, pulled out his bedroll, and removed the tie around it. “We’ll tie ourselves together. Give me your backpack.”
&
nbsp; She shrugged it off and he threw both their bags over the river and into the tunnel beyond.
”Let me see your hand,” he said.
She held it out.
He tied one end of the rope around her wrist, and the other around his. “This way, if one of us gets sucked into the whirlpool, the other will have a way to pull them out.”
“And if we both get sucked in?” She looked up at him.
He grinned. “Then we’ll die together.”
She smiled and he saw his thief in the woods. “I like that plan.”
So did he.
“You ready?” he asked.
She bit her lip and nodded. “Are you?”
He was suddenly very aware that they might die in the next few minutes. Really die. “Yeah. But just in case this is it for us…”
He pulled her into his arms and pressed his lips to hers. Wild and free, he kissed her fully, holding her face in his hands like he’d so often wished he to do.
He brought her body up against his until she was the only thing he could taste or smell or breathe.
Nobody’s eyes were glowing. No one was dying.
It was the least dangerous kiss they’d shared in centuries and it might very well be their last.
**************
Scarlet fell into Tristan’s kiss desperately. She could touch him—she could taste him—without danger and it felt like her soul had been unbound. She wanted to feel his hair and smell his skin, memorizing every small detail she had ever taken for granted.
She went up on her tiptoes to meet more of his mouth and fisted her hands into his shirt, clinging to him unabashedly. He cupped the side of her face, stroking her jaw with his thumb as he deepened their kiss and she pressed into him with a heavy hunger in her veins. Their tongues slipped over one another and their hot breaths wove together.
He lifted her into his arms and pressed her back into the glowing cave wall as she wrapped her legs around his waist. He softly kissed her ear.
She shivered.
He kissed her neck.
She squirmed.
He licked the vulnerable skin of her throat and her eyes fluttered open to a glowing blue. Not from her dying eyes, but from the walls of the pulsing cave that tucked them into its magical glow and let them feel one another without reservation.
She slid her hands into his hair and the rope around her wrist pulled tight. Tristan moved his bound wrist so she would have more room to run her fingers through his hair.
She loved his hair. She wanted to play in it.
He brought his wet mouth back to hers and slipped his tongue between her lips. Sinking a fingernail into the back of his shirt, she ran a line down his back and he shivered. She did it again and he leaned into her.
She tucked her hands under his shirt and slid them up his stomach, feeling the rope pull tight again as her bound wrist moved farther away from his. This time he pulled back on the rope, his hand slipping under her shirt and over her bare skin. Scarlet happily let her bound wrist be pulled from under his shirt and he kissed her mouth and grazed her skin.
She wiggled against him and tried to move her hand back to his hair, but the rope wouldn’t allow it. Tristan’s hand left the skin beneath her shirt and caught Scarlet’s tied hand with his own. Interlacing his fingers with hers, he brought their hands up to the cave wall beside her head and held them against the glowing blue as his teeth softly slid down her jaw until his mouth was back on hers.
Passionate and soft, his lips pressed against her as he pressed their hands to the wall.
Scarlet wanted to stay right here, bound to Tristan, forever. Behind her were centuries of heartache, and up ahead was her death. But here, in the pulsing blue caves of the very thing that had brought such tragedy to her soul, Scarlet was completely content.
And then the wall rumbled.
***************
Tristan froze, lifting his mouth from Scarlet’s hot lips.
Another rumble sounded and the tunnel began to shake.
He pressed her against him, pulling her from the wall and tucking her into his arms. The shaking intensified and he realized the tunnel was starting to cave in. Behind them, the tunnel ceiling began to crumble and pieces of blue fell to the ground, one after another, crashing closer to them with each new rumble.
Scarlet shimmied out of his body and he took her hand, before turning to face the rapids they’d need to cross if they hoped to outrun the avalanche coming their way.
He squeezed her hand and they ran for the river, leaping into the roaring currents—and possibly into their death—bound together.
For better or worse, they would be together.
This was living.
CHAPTER 40
“Are there dragonflies down here?” Heather asked for the third time that hour. She was standing between Gabriel and Nate as they walked along yet another glowing tunnel of Bluestone.
“Heather,” Gabriel said. “There are no dragonflies.” She’d been going in and out of lucidity all day. Sometimes she was normal, annoying Heather, who said O-M-G all the time. And other times she was crazy, annoying Heather, who talked about invisible insects.
She groaned. “I’m never doing drugs on purpose. This withdrawal crap sucks. All I do is hallucinate. And I have a killer headache. I can’t believe I’m seeing dragonflies.”
“It could be worse,” Nate said. “You could be seeing actual dragons. Dragons live in caves, you know.” He looked over his shoulder nervously.
“Dragons aren’t real.”
“You don’t know that.” He turned back around. “There could be dragons hidden on some tropical island or living in the deepest parts of the ocean—“
“Oh, I see fish!” Heather pointed at nothing on the wall.
“—or in the Alps or something. They could be anywhere because they’re mighty and they’re awesome.”
“Do you guys not see the fish?” she said.
“You’re right.” Gabriel said. “I’m sure there’s a sleeping dragon just around the corner.”
Nate scoffed. “Not likely. It’s almost nine at night. Everyone knows cave dragons sleep during the day and hunt at night.”
Gabriel took a long, deep breath.
“Do dragons eat fish?” Heather bit her nails, her eyes following an invisible something in the air.
“Depends on what kind of dragon it is,” Nate said. “I’m sure a sea dragon would eat fish, but other dragons eat just about anything. Birds, elephants, milk maidens. “There aren’t any dietary restrictions for land dragons.”
A low sound hummed through the caves and Heather sank her fingernails into Gabriel’s upper arm. ”Was that a dragon?”
“No.” Gabriel kept moving but let Heather keep her nails planted in his skin. “It’s probably just the wind howling through a cave hole.”
Nate made a relieved noise. “So, that’s what I heard last night.” He looked at Heather and smiled. “Cave holes. Not werewolves.”
Heather’s eyes widened. “Werewolves are super scary.”
“I know.” Nate’s eyes widened as well.
Dear God. It was like traveling with six year-olds.
The sound rumbled again and Gabriel frowned. That hadn’t sounded like the wind…
The ground started to shake and the floor in front of them began to split open.
“Ooh,” Heather blinked. “I’m bouncing.”
Nate looked around. “Is this an earthquake?”
Gabriel started to back up, but the floor behind them was crumbling as well, falling into black oblivion just inches away from their feet.
Heather peered down into the nothingness below and whispered, “Wow.”
Gabriel grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the ledge. He guided her forward, hurrying to cross as much of the still-remaining cave floor as possible before the rest of the ground gave way beneath them.
They were almost to where the cracks in the floor were still small enough to jump across, when another ru
mble shook the walls and the last bits of earth that connected the plane the stood on to the other side of the tunnel fell to pieces.
The shaking came to a quiet standstill and Gabriel surveyed their situation. Behind them was an impossibly wide canyon of blackness, so turning back wasn’t an option. And in front of them was a canyon just as wide.
They were stranded on an island of shaky cave floor.
***************
Scarlet gasped for air as she struggled to swim above the current that had pulled at her once she’d hit the water. She was being sucked toward the center of the dark whirlpool and couldn’t swim her way out of the powerful vortex.
Tristan planted his feet in the waist-deep river water, tugging at the rope around her wrist, every muscle in his body rigid with exertion. Glancing back, Scarlet watched the tunnel they jumped from collapse in on itself, thrusting large rocks into the river. The water began to rise and thrash about with the incoming rocks.
Scarlet was pulled under the cold, dark water and the whirlpool sucked her closer. She was no match for the wild water and the current pressed down on her. The rope cut into her wrist as Tristan—wherever he was—pulled against it.
Her lungs started to burn as she paddled toward the surface. The current kept pushing her down, though, and the whirlpool whipped at her ankles.
She started to feel lightheaded when her wrist jolted a bit then, slowly, her body was pulled away from the whirlpool and to the top of the water.
She broke the surface and gulped in oxygen before Tristan dragged her further away from the spinning waters and fought against the current to hold her steady.
More rocks tumbled into the river and angry waves chopped up the water.
Scarlet started swimming for the tunnel ahead but was yanked under the water again by her wrist.
Tristan.
She pulled on the rope and followed its tension to find Tristan under the water, pinned beneath a rock from the collapsing cave by the river wall. He strained to push it off, but the boulder wouldn’t move.
Scarlet dove down and tucked herself between the river wall and the rock, her back against the wall and both feet on the rock.