Black Dalliances (A Blushing Death Novel) (19 page)

Chapter 18

Three and a half hours later, we were all packed up and striding through the dark archway of the passage. Dean carried the torch as he led the way. It was a relatively short tunnel when compared to the other, only 162 paces, and somehow more claustrophobic. The tunnel was high enough that none of us had to crouch. Even Dean at 6’5” stood tall. But the passage was narrow so that Dean had to walk almost sideways just to get his shoulders through. The walls scrapped my arms as we moved, packed in together like sardines.

Dean stopped ahead of me, growling. “I hate snakes.”

“Snakes?” I said in surprise. I couldn’t say one way or another how I felt about snakes, having never come into contact with them before. The tickling sound of hissing and the slick slide of scales echoed through the tight space and my skin crawled.

Dean’s shoulders tensed into a hard line of granite. The muscles down his back tightened as he stood like a barrier between me and the gooseflesh-initiating sounds in front of us.

“What’s there?” Saeran asked from behind me.

He sounded eager to keep moving. I couldn’t blame him.

“Snakes,” I said over my shoulder.

“I hate the Outer Realm,” Saeran muttered.

Dean stepped into the next room, hugging the wall. He found torches lining the cavern walls as in the other room. Avoiding the slithering floor, he leapt easily on his toes from one speck of clear ground to the next. He was light on his feet, agile and always,
always
aware of where the snakes were as he moved.

Lit with the soft glow of the six torches, the cavern was a small oval. A third of the size of the previous room, snakes of every size and color littered the floor in a rainbow of slithering movement.

Spaced equally and precisely apart on the cold stone floor were three chests. Each had a rounded top like tiny steamer trunks. They appeared heavy with the dull grayish patina of pewter and were carved with ornate images that I couldn’t quite make out from across the room.

I wanted to get a closer look but we had to figure out a way around the snakes first. The chests and the vicinity surrounding them seemed to be the area where most of the little bastards congregated in big heaping, slithering piles. Talk about a deterrent.

My resolve wavered as the snakes slithered over themselves to cluster at Dean’s feet. Right then, I decided, I didn’t like snakes very much either.

“Ideas?” Saeran said behind me.

“The contents of the chests,” I offered. “That’s what we’re after.”

“The problem is getting there,” Dean said. His kissable lips had disappeared in a thin line of disquiet and his jaw was as hard as steel while his pulse beat a throbbing rhythm in the thick vein in his neck. The rigid set of his shoulders made my heart quicken to match his. I’d never seen him like this, and it scared me.

“I’ll go,” I said, hesitating as the idea of the snakes slithering over me made my stomach tighten. Dean’s large warm hand, gripped my bicep as I took a step forward. His fingers tightened around me in a painful hold that was too forceful, unlike him. I glared up at him in the space of the narrow tunnel opening and met his worried eyes.

“You’ll get no argument from me,” Saeran said.

“I can do this,” Dean bit out through clenched teeth. His eyes flashed from his soft olive-green to the compelling, dangerous blue of his wolf.

Softening at the resolve in his tone, I couldn’t help but touch him. The Eithina in me wanted to soothe him, chase his fears away. I rested my hands on his firm muscled chest and peered up at him. His heart pounded in his chest, with a hard frantic thud against my hand and I knew I couldn’t let him go in there—not when I could go instead.

“I know you can,” I said with confidence. “We’re a team, remember? It’s my turn to lead.” Leaning into him, I pressed my breasts and the steady beat of my heart against his firm bulky chest and rose up on my toes. I pressed a chaste kiss to his mouth. His lips were soft, inviting, and warm as he relaxed against me. Breathing deep, he took in my scent and clung to me.

He caressed the crease of my lips with his hot, lush tongue. I opened to him and slid my tongue against his, licking the inside of his mouth. He consumed my senses, filling my nose with his rich musky scent. My mouth exploded with the rich taste of him as he devoured me and ignited a burn deep in my body. What I wouldn’t give to crawl into bed with him, with both he and Patrick.

Patrick!

I reared back, breaking the kiss, a sad smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.
Later
, I mouthed silently to him. Lowering his forehead to mine, he panted, his chest heaving with the effort as his hands rubbed smooth, gentle lines up my biceps. We had to keep moving. I had the sinking feeling that we were running out of time.

“This is uncomfortable,” Saeran groaned, backing away and putting as much space between us and him as possible. Even if it was only a few steps back.

“Go if you’re going,” Dean said with a resigned sigh.

“Hey,” I bit back. I was doing this so he wouldn’t have to. I deserved some consideration, a thank you, at least a cookie for Christ’s sakes.

He crossed his arms over his chest and I instantly missed the heat of his body next to mine, his hands on me, the feeling of security I had in my gut when he was near. He smirked at me as if that had been his intention all along. He was a sneaky bastard.

“You did this on purpose!” I snapped.

He shrugged with a mocking expression of innocence on his face.

“You’ll pay for this,” I ground out between clenched teeth as I yanked the torch from his hand.

“Maybe,” he whispered against my ear.

I shivered at the blatant sexuality in that one, delicious word.

“Bastard,” I breathed.

He snorted a soft chuckle and stepped back, leaving me as much room as he could. I turned toward the open room and the thousands of snakes slithering across the stone floor. I guess there’s no time like the present.

I stepped out into the mass of wriggling beasts, sliding my feet forward inch by inch as things I didn’t want to see or touch slithered over my feet with a weight that made my stomach turn. They were heavier than I’d thought, quicker too.

Keeping my eyes forward on the prize, I didn’t dare glance down or my nerve would falter. A crushing pressure wrapped around my ankle and I froze. My mind kept screaming at me to run but my body was frozen stiff with fear that I wouldn’t be in time to save Patrick. I couldn’t have run if the devil himself had been chasing me. I had to keep going, there was no room for failure. Screaming silently in my mind with each squeeze of pressure around my ankle, I was unable to make my body do what instinct begged me to do. I’d never reacted to anything like this, and I’d killed vampires, werewolves, and demons.

I had to move before the giant creature wrapping around my leg got a real hold on me. My heart thundered in my ears and my breath was sharp and shallow as I panted around the panic. Forcing a deep breath into my lungs and then another, I raised my nerve and slowed my heart.

“Baby?” Dean’s voice, a soft reassurance at my back. It was all he had to say to get me moving.

“I’m okay,” I bit out over my shoulder.

I wasn’t okay. My brain had momentarily short-circuited and my fingers itched to draw Gladi and start slicing. I didn’t know what would happen if I did that, though. This was Baba Yaga’s magic. The snakes would probably multiply, and I’d end up wading through piles of scaly blobs up to my knees. I sure as hell didn’t want that.

I stood rigid with the torch clutched in my hand so tight the wood cracked and splintered beneath my grip. Gathering at my feet, vipers, asps, boas, pythons, and breeds I had no name for moved into a shifting pile of scales. The longer I remained stiff and immobile, the more they gathered and clung to my legs. I had to get that damned boa constrictor unwrapped from around my calf before he got any higher and keep moving.

Lowering the torch down to my leg, I pressed the flame against the scaly skin of the snake now squeezing my calf up to my knee. The fire climbed up the torch, licking my fingers with its painful heat. The skin on my hand burned and it took everything I had to keep my grip on that damned torch instead of dropping it. The big bastard finally hissed and recoiled, falling from me in a heap of singed scales.

“I hate snakes. I hate snakes,” I mumbled in an acerbic mantra as I inched closer to the first chest nestled in-between the slithering piles.

The closer I got, the thicker the snakes became. I waved the torch outward, burning them as I went. I wanted them as far from me as I could get them. After another five minutes of heart-thudding fear pulsing through my veins like acid, I finally reached the first chest.

It was small, smaller than I’d originally thought. Only about two feet long and another foot wide and then deep, it was intricately engraved in a scene that covered the entire surface. I kicked a snake from the top of the chest to see the engraving better and to get it the hell away from me.

A lake sat peacefully next to a mound. Along the edge of the lake, three people stood, two men and a woman. The woman held a blade in her hand and a pack strapped to her back. The scene and the three people seemed eerily familiar.

“I’m so tired of this shit,” I growled at the chest, at the snakes, at Baba Yaga, hell, at the world. I was tired of being the pawn in other peoples’ power plays. Just once, I wanted to be ahead of the game and know what was going on before I got somewhere and it was too damned late.

“What?” Dean called.

I should’ve known he’d hear me. Damned werewolf hearing.

“Nothing,” I grumbled.

I reached out and shoved on the lid of the chest but the damned thing wouldn’t budge. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I snarled to the chest. “It’s locked.”

I turned to glance back at Dean and Saeran huddled by the door. This day just got better and better.

“Break it open,” Dean suggested.

“I’d advise against that,” Saeran cautioned. “This is Faerie. There will be a key. The magic will keep it closed no matter what you do until you find the proper key. There are more than likely pitfalls if you open it incorrectly.”

“Fabulous!”

“What now?” Dean asked.

How the hell was I supposed to know? Scanning the room for some mystical fucking key, I found nothing but the round walls of the cavern, the few torches giving us very poor light, and the damned snakes. I inched the few feet to the next chest. Another damned snake wrapped around my leg and I shook it off, fanning the flames of my torch across its scaly skin. My hand still hurt from the last burn and I wasn’t about to burn myself again if I could help it.

The next chest was just as elaborately carved. The picture on the top was of me, huddled by the chest with Ewen’s diamond blade in my hand. It was coated in a dark liquid dripping from the edge of the blade.

“Damn it! I need the Ewen blade.”

Dean had stashed it in his pack for safe keeping when we’d rested and I’d moved into this creepy chamber without it. Something about the way he’d laid on the pack while we took a minor time out made me think Dean didn’t quite trust Saeran yet either. Go figure.

“Can you toss it to me?” I asked, making my way back, slow and steady to the first chest through the sea of heavy slithering snakes.

“It’s sharp,” Dean said in protest.

“Dean,” I snarled, my aggravation showing in my tone.

He handed Saeran his pack and dug out the blade. Stepping out into the slithering snake pit, Dean met my gaze.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not throwing a sword at you,” he gritted out through clenched teeth and an iron jaw. I swung the torch around, shooing the snakes away from me as I waited for him to cross the distance. It took him a few minutes of mumbled curses and soft rumbling growls but he made it no worse for wear.

He handed the glittering diamond blade to me. I didn’t hesitate, slicing my hand open and drenching the blade in a slick coating of my blood. Why was it always blood? Why couldn’t it just once, be an actual key instead of blood?

“What the hell?” Dean cursed as I slit my hand open and the blood dripped down my fingers and splattered on the snakes at my feet.

I leaned down and shoved the blood-soaked tip of the blade into the lock on top of the chest. The latch sprang open, popping the lid just enough to slide my fingers underneath and I lifted it up.

“Did it work?” Saeran called from the safety of the tunnel.

“Yep,” Dean answered back over his shoulder. He returned his gaze back to the chest and then to me. The entire inside of the chest was covered in plush black velvet. Lying inside, shimmering in the low light sat a clear blue disc. A gemstone glittered, the torchlight reflecting through its many facets.

“What is that?” I asked in awe. It caught the light and splashed pale blue-edged prisms across Dean’s face, almost matching the blue of his wolf eyes.

“Topaz, I think,” Dean whispered.

Picking it up, I turned it over in my clean hand. A notch was carved out through the center of the shimmering topaz that was smooth and intentional, not broken and chipped.

“It has to fit somewhere. You know, Tab A slides into Slot B.” It was a bad joke and I was tired.

Dean rolled his eyes and took the diamond blade from me. Turning it over in his hands, he took the topaz disc from me too. Examining the two pieces, he slid the blunt end of the Ewen blade into the notch. Magic hissed in the room, making the air static as energy rippled out from the blade. The wave of power was so strong, it flickered the lit torches along the edges of the room. Snakes cleared from the first chest and slithered over to the other two.

“Shit!” I hissed as the flames from the torches stopped jumping and finally settled.

Dean glanced at me with a twinkle of smugness lighting his olive-green eyes. “One down.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, inching to the next chest and swinging that damned torch as I went. He followed, slowly.

The blade was still covered in my blood so I took it and shoved it in the lock at the top of the chest. The mechanism fizzled and smoked but didn’t open.