Alive (The Veiled World Book 1) (15 page)

“Good idea,” said Axel, who followed suit. We all did. Once all our canteens were filled, everyone turned back to their gear.

“Let’s get this done quickly, people.” Axel’s eyes scanned the sky, which had darkened already with the setting sun.

Jacob sat back on his heels and measured the sunset with his fingers and nodded. “We’ve got twenty minutes before the sun is completely set.” He sighed, staring down at his gear, and finally tore into a roll.

I followed suit. The scent of bacon had ruined my efforts to save my bread roll for tomorrow’s breakfast. But seeing as we could smell bacon cooking, perhaps we’d get a meal by tomorrow. If there was a village, then we might even be able to stock up on supplies. My belly grumbled despite the bread roll being in there. I wished I’d eaten more for lunch in the ballroom.

The rain had stopped and the scent of bacon was gone, replaced instead with that earthy smell of damp ground.

I grabbed a flat, sharp stone from beneath the tree and started to dig into the dark dirt at the base of the tree trunk. Jacob and Noah followed suit and Axel went around checking to see if everyone had kept the essentials.

“Do you really need this thing?” he asked Claire, holding up her pink phone.

She lunged for it as though he’d snatched up her heart or brain.

“Of course I do.”

Reece, his hands dirty from digging his own hole, stood up and pointed a dirty index finger into Axel’s chain-mailed chest, right on the eye of the unicorn. “Listen knob-head, that’s the last time you touch my girlfriend’s stuff. You’ll be on the ground the next time you do.”

Jacob stopped digging and stared, his muscles flinching. He looked about as sweaty as I felt. I stopped too and sat back on the heels of my boots. Axel was a head taller than Reece and was covered in more wiry muscle, but Reece was stocky and built like a wrestler. I wasn’t sure who’d win in a fight between the two. But something in Axel’s eyes, a coolness in them, told me he’d win. Again, my stomach flipped as I watched him stare Reece down.

“Come on, we’ve only got twenty minutes,” Kyle said, and we all got on with our digging.

I didn’t bury much. My backpack wasn’t too hard to carry so I decided to keep it. The only thing that actually bothered me was the helmet. With part reluctance and part relief, I put it in the hole I’d dug and covered it over with the dark, cool dirt.

The rest buried their helmets too. Noah, Kyle, and Claire buried their chainmail too.

Just as we all stood up, the sun disappeared behind the horizon, revealing several slopes and a tiny, thin strip of smoke snaking up from between two hills.

There were more trees in that direction, a small forest in the distance, blocking our view of what was behind there, but at least we knew that the smoke signalled signs of life.

“We head in the direction of those woods,” said Axel. “No one goes beyond them unless I say so. We’ll check the woods first, make sure it’s safe. And nobody follows the smoke until we’ve searched the woods. We don’t know who or what is over there yet. No matter how harmless these farming fields look, we have to remain aware. It’s our lives that will pay if we don’t. Maybe all of our lives.”

“I’m betting they’re friendly farmers,” said Reuben, running ahead, his excitement contagious to the others, who followed. “With some sexy daughters who wear tiny chequered shirts and cut off denims.”

Axel actually laughed and so did Jacob, but I felt tense for some reason. Nothing about this cosy farmland felt right. It was too easy. Too safe. Plus, the hairs on the back of my neck kept prickling.

The purplish blue of the oncoming night sky seemed to drape itself over the land, tarnishing the greenery with darkness. It felt eerie and lonely without stars. Without them twinkling above me, I felt unprotected. As though I’d lost my connection with Sam. He couldn’t help me while I was in someone else’s afterlife.

An owl hooted from somewhere nearby and a couple minutes later I found it perched on a fence. It fixed its eyes on me for a millisecond before it hooted once more and flew off into the darkness, ready to hunt for afterlife mice.

I kept my eyes on the woods up ahead for as long as I could until the silhouettes of the trees blurred against the dark sky.

Every hair on my head prickled against my scalp and I couldn’t help but rest my hand on my sword. I found the smooth slope of the flamed hilt comforting. Earlier, after I’d buried my helmet and was waiting around for everyone else to finish up, I killed time by swinging my sword at a fence post, trying to nick the same spot twice. On the last swing I’d managed to do it, so now I felt minutely more confident with my swordsmanship than I had when I’d first held it.

Something crunched to my left, where there was only blackness, and I jumped, before unsheathing my sword and pointing it out in front of me.

“Who’s there?”

Hot blood pounded in my ears.

Someone came up behind me and I spun around and cried out.

“Far out, settle down, dragon girl!” It was Reece, but I could only tell by the sound of his voice and the faint silhouette of his body.

“Shit, you scared me.” My heart punched against my chest and the pulse in my ears throbbed.

The sky was now pitch black apart from the faintest pale pink glow outlining the horizon where the sun had set.

“I heard something.”

“Yeah, you heard me,” came Reuben’s voice from where I’d heard the noise. “I was taking a pi—”

“From now on, if anybody wants to leave the group, you’ve got to vocalise it.”

Axel’s hand rested on the small of my back and he leaned in, his hair tickling my cheek.

“You all right?”

“Yeah. Just a little jumpy.” I took a step back and sheathed my sword. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”

“Me too.”

We trudged on, this time in a much tighter group, the night bringing us closer.

“Stop stepping on my ankles!”

“Shut up, Noah, stop getting in my way.”

“You shut up.”

“Who asked you, Jake-knob?”

“Shut up, all of you!” said Bruce.

Everyone settled into a certain silence, but the darkness seemed to emphasise every step and breath we took.

The air turned surprisingly chilly and after someone’s teeth started chattering, we all stopped to put our jackets on. When we’d unpacked our stuff earlier beneath the tree, I’d noticed that everyone’s jacket was different. The fact that we were all different sizes would have had a lot to do with it. But one thing we all had noticed was that the jackets were all huge, larger than our normal sizes. “To fit over the mail,” Axel had said.

Mine was a bomber jacket with torn, repatched sleeves, Claire’s a red raincoat, her favourite colour, and Axel had a knee length, tattered leather coat that probably made him look like a rock star when he wore it.

“Not long to go,” said Axel as we continued walking. Luckily, we could just make out a pale path between the two now dark paddocks on either side of us, and it was leading us directly to the woods up ahead.

An hour or so later, Reuben swore out loud, sending my hand to the hilt of my sword.

“My head just found the fucking woods!” he said, and we all laughed.

Noah screamed and started waving his arms around, accidentally slapping my butt. “I think I just walked into a spider web. Get it off me!”

Jacob jumped and bumped into me, his head butting mine.

“Sorry,” he said, grabbing hold of my arms to steady himself.

“That’s okay.” When he removed his hands, my arms tingled where he’d touched, even with my jacket on, and for a second I wanted his hands back. Weird. There had to be something wrong with me, getting all tingly and emotional every time somebody touched me in the past forty-eight hours.

Maybe it was because for the past six months, I wasn’t really somebody many people touched. Not only did the town blame me for my brother’s death, but most girls and guys at school were intimidated by my height and rarely did I receive the daily, squealy hugs that girls like Claire and Bella got every five minutes in the school corridors. Worst of all, Mum had stopped kissing me before bedtime. That hurt the most.

“What now, Mr. David Attenborough?” said Reece.

There was a giggle, followed by silence.

Bruce spoke up before Axel had a chance. I’d almost forgotten he was with us. He had that creepy ability to blend into the background.

“I think we should set up camp beneath these trees, get some sleep, and see what’s beyond the forest in the morning. We’ll get up at first light and a couple of us can go and have a look and see what’s there.”

“Send Amber out there,” someone said, Reuben or Reece, and there was muffled laugher. “She’ll scare away whatever’s there.”

Jacob shifted closer to me and I swore I could feel the tension in his muscles.

“Don’t listen to those dickheads.”

“I don’t,” I said, and crouched down to feel around for smooth ground. When I set my bag down, a light glowed. Axel had lit up a match before setting light to a stick wrapped in some kind of cloth that smelt a bit like kerosene.

“Shit!”

There was enough light to see Kyle fall back onto his behind. Everyone laughed.

“Don’t go lighting things up and waving it around without a warning,” he said, shaking his head, but then laughing with the rest of us.

“It won’t be for long. I’m only lighting it so that everyone can get their mattresses unrolled and blankets out, then we’re going to be in the dark for the rest of the night. I don’t want to alert whoever’s out here to our whereabouts.”

I noticed that Bruce had already set up camp, slightly away from us. It was almost as though he didn’t want to become too attached to us.

We rushed to unroll our mattresses and get the things we needed out of our backpacks. Jacob held the torch for Axel once he was finished so that he could get his stuff ready as well. The forest floor was green, almost unnaturally so, like the grass in the fields. Small piles of soft, dark green leaves were scattered here and there, rustling with the slightest bit of movement or wind. Because I was a light sleeper, I was pretty sure that sleep wasn’t going to happen for me here.

Jacob had unrolled his mattress beside mine, with Axel on the other side of me. Claire was on the other side of Axel and then there was Reece and Reuben, then Kyle and Noah.

“Make sure you all eat something, otherwise you won’t sleep.”

Bruce. So he hadn’t forgotten about us.

I fossicked in my pack and took out a strip of dried meat. It tasted good, even though I didn’t know what I was eating. Beef maybe. The only problem was that it was extremely salty so I needed a few good swigs of my water until my thirst went away. I was so grateful for that rain. My canteen had been half-empty already by that stage.

Jacob handed the torch back to Axel, who was munching on a crisp apple.

Seconds later, the light went out.

There was quite a bit of rustling until everyone got comfortable.

An owl, maybe the same one from earlier, hooted and I swore I could hear the eerie sound of a pig squealing from somewhere far away. It made me think of the bacon and got me wondering who might be out there beyond the forest. My mind filled with images of friendly farm people, feeding us eggs and bacon and apple pie in the morning. But then my mind drifted to my parents, alone, back home on the farm. What were they were doing right now, and did they miss me?

“What if there are snakes out here?” said Reuben.

“Just go to sleep,” Claire said, and I heard some murmuring and rustling and then what sounded like weeping, before it turned into soft laughter and then…
kissing sounds.

I squeezed my eyes shut and rolled over, but I knew sleep wasn’t going to come easy. Especially not with the wet sounds of Claire’s and Reece’s tongues and lips going for it. Plus, my body was too wired, and it didn’t help that I had Jacob on one side of me and Axel on the other. Every breath, every rumble of a stomach, seemed so loud.

“You can breathe you know, Amber,” said Axel, and a deep laugh rumbled in his throat.

I sighed, and released a huge breath. I couldn’t believe that I’d been listening to both guys breathe while holding my own breath.

“I’m just listening for sounds—intruder sounds. That’s all.”

“Try to sleep,” Axel said, rolling onto his side. “We’ll need the energy for tomorrow.” He was close. Close enough for me to feel his breath against my cheek and the vibration of his deep voice.

“You’re doing it again. Stop holding your breath, Amber.” There was an underlying chuckle in his voice. He was getting a kick out of the fact that his nearness was affecting me.

But it was.

Oh God, it was.

And it didn’t help that a soft breeze was blowing his scent all over me. He smelt like…well, a man.

How was I going to fall asleep when I was lying next to a hot, throaty-voiced, grassy-pine scented
man
?

My ridiculous heart was pounding so hard now, I was sure the whole group, including Bruce, who slept a few metres away, could hear it.