“Better?” She cocked her head at Tristan.
“Yes. You’ve just extended your life by at least an hour.”
***************
The morning sun warmed Scarlet’s face as she looked up at the happy sky. Warmth was nice, she decided. The sun, in general, was a happy constant, rising each morning and bringing newness with it. Why had she never seen the sun as such a beam of hope before?
She stretched her hands out and absently let the leaves of nearby trees brush against her fingers, green and soft, cool from the earlier dew, still living while attached to the great tree that brought them life day after day. Another leaf brushed her palm and she squeezed it briefly, releasing it before it was pulled from its life source by her greedy palm.
To her left, Tristan’s face was staring ahead, alert and beautiful in the daylight. Next to him, Nate adjusted his backpack as he weaved through trees. To her left, Gabriel walked along quietly, looking every few minutes at Heather by his side.
Heather scratched at her neck and twitched, then looked at Gabriel. “Am I acting crazy?”
Gabriel smiled. “Nah.”
It was a lie, but it was a beautiful lie.
Scarlet was grateful for beautiful lies.
Heather would be cured.
Gabriel would fall in love someday.
Tristan would understand Scarlet’s sacrifice.
Nate’s heart would heal from Molly’s death.
Beautiful lies, all of them.
They walked until the sun began to set and, finally, they found the Bluestone caves.
The mouth of the caves looked just like a cluster of boulders, but with bright green wines wrapped around them. The only thing that gave away the caves themselves were the glinting blue stones that jutted out from between the thick vines every few feet.
“This is it,” Scarlet said, bringing everyone to a stop.
Gabriel eyed the thorny tendrils that blocked the cave entrance like a giant green gate. “And these are the magic vines?”
The vines were as thick as Scarlet’s forearms, covered in thorns, and too overgrown and tangled to see through.
“Yep,” said Scarlet. “And they’re supposed to be deadly, too.”
“They don’t look very magical,” Nate said. “Or deadly.”
“The journal said the vines can only be cut with immortal blood, so,” Scarlet took a blood-coated knife from her belt, “let’s see if this works.” Raising her knife, she swung the blade down on the nearest vine and watched as it easily sliced in half.
Huh.
Heather made a face. “Well, that was anticlimactic.”
Scarlet frowned and was just about to shrug off the whole magical/deadly plant thing when the severed vine began to move. It grew new tendrils and pulled itself back together, mending the green gate until there was no longer a gap.
“Now
that
looks magical,” Nate said.
Scarlet took a deep breath. “All we have to do is cut through these vines as quickly as possible and enter the caves before they close back up.”
“And trap us inside,” Heather added with a shrug. “That’s not terrifying.”
Tristan was already handing out bloodstained weapons to everyone. “If we all swing at the same time, we should be able to make a wide enough hole for all of us to squeeze through before the vines grow back.” He gave a pointed look at Gabriel then nodded to Heather.
“Wha—what was that?” Heather lifted a brow. “What was that
hey bro, make sure the blond chick doesn’t cut any body parts off
look? Because I’ll have you know, I’m an expert with butcher knives.”
Tristan pointed at the weapon in Heather’s hand. “That’s a machete.”
Puckering her lips, Heather looked at the blade. “Aren’t they the same thing?”
“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t just say that. Everybody ready?” Tristan looked around to make sure everyone had their weapons raised. One…Two…
Three
.”
Everyone swung and pieces of the vine fell to the side as Team Awesome hurried through the vines and into the blackness beyond.
“Ow.” Nate sucked air through his teeth just as the vines started to move back together. He lifted his torn sleeve to show a bloody scratch on his shoulder.
“Watch out for the thorns.” He wiped the blood away. New blood bubbled from the wound. He wiped again. Still bleeding.
“Why aren’t you healing?” Gabriel asked.
Scarlet examined the thorns. “The thorns have blue tips. Maybe they work like Bluestone.”
“Perfect,” Gabriel said. “Killer plants.”
The vines continued slithering until the vine wall was completely reconstructed and had shut them inside the caves which, Scarlet now realized, were not completely dark.
A soft, blue glow illuminated the cave walls and softly pulsed, as if the caves were alive and breathing. The pulsing blue shimmered with each breath like glowing stardust and it was almost beautiful.
“Oh no. I’m seeing them again.” Heather sounded panicked. “I see more sparkles. Like everywhere, you guys. O-M-G, O-M-G—“
“No, no. It’s okay, Heather,” Scarlet said. “That’s just the caves. The walls are actually sparkling.”
“Oh.” Heather calmed down a bit.
“When you said ‘caves’,” Nate said to Scarlet. “I had something less sparkly and more bat-infested in mind.”
Scarlet stepped forward. “So did I.”
Nate said, “Well this is awesome. The glowing walls will make navigating the caves much easier.”
Though it was still rather dark, the blue walls gave off enough light for them to find their way through the tunnels without flashlights.
Tristan shifted. “And these caves are supposed to weaken immortals?”
“Yeah. If the deadly plants don’t kill you first.” Gabriel touched a hand to the cave wall and waited. “I don’t feel any different.”
“Me neither.” Nate scratched his head.
“I actually feel…stronger,” Tristan said.
Scarlet felt for him, but nothing echoed inside her soul.
“Maybe the caves aren’t as debilitating as we thought,” Nate said.
She looked at Tristan and tried again, but still nothing.
He caught her eyes. “What’s up?”
“Uh…” Scarlet felt around inside herself. “I can’t feel you anymore. Like at all.”
Tristan frowned. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Can you feel me?”
He shook his head.
“That’s weird.” Scarlet looked at Nate. “Do you know why—“
Tristan wrapped a warm hand around her wrist, gently encircling it in his fingers and Scarlet turned her eyes to where they were touching.
“Do you feel anything?” he asked.
She felt no supernatural pleasure at his touch. She just felt…normal. Wonderful.
“Oh,” Nate said in realization. “That’s what the journal meant by deadly to immortals. The caves must cancel out our immortality.”
She walked her eyes up to Tristan’s. For the first time in five hundred years they were touching without one of them being in danger.
From the look in his eyes, he’d realized the same thing.
And now the hand around her wrist felt incredibly intimate. Warm and safe and
intimate
.
Nate nodded. “It would also explain why you guys can’t feel each other in here and why Tristan feels stronger. You’re not sharing a life-force right now.”
Imagine that.
Tristan hadn’t released her wrist yet and Scarlet was absolutely okay with that. For like ever.
“Everyone’s mortal. Yay. Now can we get moving?” Heather said.
Tristan ran his thumb over Scarlet’s wrist and something about it made her heart leap. It was a simple touch, but it was carefree and unafraid. Tristan hadn’t touched her in such a weightless way in hundreds of years and she didn’t want him to let go.
But he did. He slowly released her wrist, his fingers brushing the length of her hand as he pulled away and it took Scarlet a moment to get the butterflies in her stomach to behave.
Everyone was staring at them.
“O-kay.” Nate clasped his hands. “Who wants to walk through the uncomfortable sexual tension first? Gabriel? Heather?”
“Ugh. Gag me,” Heather said. “Wait no. No one gag me.”
Gabriel rolled his eyes and walked deeper into the cave, Heather and Nate moving behind him.
Scarlet followed her friends through the glowing caves, staying by Tristan’s side as they walked along. His shoulder brushed against hers and the electricity that ran through her body had nothing to do with immortal blood or magic. It was just…real.
She glanced at him, looking at his shadowed profile in the blue glow around them. It had been so long since anything between them had been real. Or allowed. Or safe.
His eyes met hers and held them for a beat before Scarlet faced forward and swallowed. Her throat was dry. Her heart was dry. She missed him. He was walking right next to her and still she missed him. She’d been missing him for centuries.
As if he could still read her emotions, Tristan’s fingers brushed the back of her arm and slowly slid to her wrist before slipping into her hand. He wrapped her hand in his like there hadn’t been years between them, between their hearts. They were connected at the hand and Scarlet could breathe, really breathe, for the first time since she and Tristan had run in the trees together in her first life.
She lightly squeezed his hand, just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. They were touching and no one was dying. If Scarlet hadn’t been so wrecked over what she was planning to do, she would have smiled.
The first hour of their hike through the caves consisted mostly of Nate contemplating the most efficient route to the fountain. The caves split off into dozens of tunnels that went every which way. Following the map, Nate led the way through a series of rather uneventful tunnels and was fairly confident they would get to the fountain ahead of schedule.
But a few hours into their hike, they hit a wall.
It was a wall of vines, but still.
This vine gate was different than the last. It was wide and in constant movement. Stretching almost fifteen feet across, the vines twisted and crawled across the tunnel like a wall of snakes, making a
shhh
,
shhh
sound.
Through in the vines, Scarlet could only see more vines, indicating the wall was very thick, and the blue tips of the vine’s thorns glowed in a pulsing rhythm.
According to the map, breeching the wall of thorny vines was necessary if they wanted to continue.
So that sucked.
“Goodie,” Gabriel said. “A moving wall of death.”
“Think of it like an obstacle course,” Nate said. “We just need to hack through the vines and tuck and roll until we’ve made it to the other side.”
“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.