Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,68

fine.

And maybe Caedmon, the asshole, had had a point after all, I thought, because deprivation of the other senses seemed to have opened up a new one. One that I decided to call weight, although it wasn’t really related to touch. The air just seemed heavier in some places, more meaningful, like gravity bending around a star.

Only it wasn’t a star that was huddled in a corner, under a jutting shelf of the cave material.

And, once I identified it, it was impossible to miss. Something small, something weak, something frightened. Especially when it realized that I could detect it.

It let out a small noise that sounded thunderous to my straining ears, and took off—to the left. I knew because I could track it. Not with my eyes, but with the sense of weight that pulled at me, like I was holding a wildly careening kite caught in a gale.

I scrambled to my feet and followed the crazed little thing, which was bouncing off walls and breathing heavily in rapid little puffs. I was frightening it, even though I wasn’t trying to. I wanted to call out, to reassure it, but the scary echoes might make things worse instead of better. I didn’t know what to do, and I was getting farther away from anywhere Billy might look for me.

I should turn back, I thought.

But if I did, that was it. I wouldn’t know anything more than I already did, and I didn’t know anything! Not what this thing was, why it was inhabiting a dead brain, or—

Or why it was flying at my face! The small creature suddenly reversed course, coming back at a run and slamming straight into me. “Kulullû,” it whispered in a panicked voice. “Kulullû, Kulullû!”

“No, Cassie,” I said—to no one. Because it was already tearing back the way we’d come, like a literal bat out of hell. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, except that it was dragging me along with it!

We’d gotten tangled up, but I couldn’t see how and didn’t have time to ask. I was jerked along behind it and then under another overhang I also couldn’t see but felt pressing down on top of me. The creature was at my side, quivering in fear, but not of me, I realized. I might have startled it before, but now it was huddled up against me as if I could somehow save it from . . . what, exactly?

“Kulullû,” it whispered. And if that meant “fuck,” I agreed, I thought, as light started to push elongated fingers into the darkness.

It was the same light I’d seen up top, or at least, it looked that way. But I wasn’t real interested in seeing what was shedding it, suddenly. I was beginning to think that maybe it had been hunter, not prey, and that it was looking for us.

And it was getting close.

We stayed there, me and the small thing, soundless, breathless, huddled together in fear of whatever was slouching this way. Or squelching, I thought, because that was what it sounded like. Not footsteps or even hooves striking down, just . . . squelching. With a weird sucking sound at the end of every step that made me think of a formless ball of phlegm—and wasn’t that just all I needed?

No, I thought.

What I needed was Billy Joe, because without him, I didn’t know how to leave this place!

And then I realized that no, no I didn’t need him, at least not now, when a familiar voice called out: “Cass! Cassie! Damn it, where did you go?”

Billy, I thought, my heart in my throat.

The squelching stopped.

I couldn’t see what was happening, because we were too far under the ledge. A green haze had started to filter down from above, almost too thin to see. But any light was bright down here. And then something pale, with a glistening skin that shed some kind of viscous ooze, paused outside the opening of the overhang—for an instant.

Before scrabbling up what appeared to be some kind of cliff face, almost too fast to see.

It was headed straight for my oldest friend, the one who had come in here with me when he didn’t have to, the one who’d saved my life more times than I could count, the one who would never see it coming.

I didn’t think; I didn’t even hesitate. I burst out of our hiding place and screamed: “Billy! Run!”

There was no time to see if he did or not. There was no time for anything.