“It’s probably just a trick of the caves. Maybe there’s a crevice his voice is traveling through,” Brandon suggested. He had dirt caked on his face and neck that made his blue eyes stick out more and marred the rose tattoo on his neck. The lantern flickered off his eyebrow piercing.
The way he fervently kept pushing at the head of the pack made me think he had to concentrate on something or he’d break down again.
I looked up at the slope, wondering if it had been a good idea to travel down it. We were probably far beneath the surface of the earth and only headed in deeper. I tried to visualize how much solid rock and earth might be above us, pressing down.
The entrance at the top of the slope was jagged and wide like teeth, the slope was like a throat we just let swallow us. It was as if the cave was eating us, swallowing us into the earth.
Movement at the top of the slope caught my attention. I went still, my eyes widening.
“What was that?” I asked, my voice caught between a whisper and a choke.
“What?” Caspian asked.
“There’s something up there. I saw something move.” Everyone went silent as we looked up the slope at that jagged mouth at the top. After a minute of seeing nothing, they all seemed to relax.
“It was just the lantern flickering on the rocks. Shadows moving,” Caspian said, pressing another kiss to my head. His fingers brushed one of my eyebrows, tracing the shape. “I can see a lot in the dark and can sense movement easily. There’s nothing there,” Caspian assured me when I wouldn’t look away.
“Okay.” I swallowed and pushed the thoughts off as we moved into the tunnel. Except this wasn’t the first time I saw movement and I couldn’t shake the sensation of something being in the caves with us. Something that was behind us, following us even. I kept turning to look but saw nothing except the tunnel being swallowed by darkness.
“We just passed the slope,” Brandon called out, holding the lantern up as we shuffled along. I was getting more tired every minute. The energy that had propelled me towards rescue was leaking from my body all at once. I began to shuffle my feet, closing my eyes to take a long, deep breath.
“Not much farther, I didn’t go too far in!” Thomas called back. It wasn’t just that I felt tired, I felt off. It was hard to describe—a general malaise that felt like a weight inside my body.
Caspian moved forward, leaving my side to walk next to Brandon. He began talking to him about setting some time limit for how much longer we searched. Brandon was appalled by the idea.
I lifted up my left hand and looked at the splinter. I began to chew on the inside of my cheek as I looked at the blackness spreading out across my finger. It was spreading fast. Half my finger looked dark and it crawled towards the knuckle, moving closer to the rest of my body.
Mothman noticed me observing the wound and reached out, sliding his long fingers delicately around my wrist. Perhaps to him, humans were frail like porcelain dolls that all eventually shattered. He looked at the splinter as we walked side by side, then he gently let me have my hand back. His eyes moved to mine and he brushed his knuckles along my cheek before cradling my face.
He seemed worried. I couldn’t help but let his concern bleed into my own, making it grow. From the beginning, there was something about this splinter that didn’t seem right. That didn’t seem natural.
And now I felt off, like I could be getting sick.
My mind tumbled the wordcursein my head over and over. The word was like a shoe in the dryer, rattling and banging away. What did it mean exactly though? What was wrong with me?
Mothman eyed Caspian and Brandon walking a few feet ahead then he stopped moving forward and leaned towards me. I pressed backwards, my back touching the cave wall. His feathery antennae bent forward and I sucked in a breath as I felt the briefest sensation of them on my cheek. They were soft, a delicate tickle on my cheek. It felt intimate.
I looked at Mothman with big eyes, my heart rate increasing by how close we were. The moment in his cabin, when he’d brought me intense pleasure, rolled to the forefront of my mind, making things twitch and ache between my legs. I’d never felt anything like that in my life.
His body was so large that he loomed over me without trying. His red eyes burned into me and only the briefest sound of white noise hummed in my head. I realized I was getting used to his presence, building a tolerance.
As his body surrounded and hovered over mine, I felt a little overwhelmed. His hand came up and stroked my hair, wrapping the ends around two of his clawed fingers. He pressed closer, until I felt his leather duster pressing into me from chest to hip as I leaned against the tunnel wall.
My breath hitched and I pressed my thighs tighter together. I’d seen those sexual drawings he’d made. I knew fully what he was interested in now. Automatically my mind tried to imagine it. It seemed perverse with his inhuman looks and furred body, his red eyes humming preternaturally in my head.
I’d be so tense that he’d need to use that special tongue of his to open me up, make me slick and loose enough that he could press hard inside me.
A shiver ran over me and my cheeks felt hot. I realized my nipples were hard as they brushed against his leather duster. He wasn’t even doing anything, just twirling my hair in his fingers and watching my reaction to his closeness. Could he read on my face what I was thinking about? One of his feathery feelers traced my cheek.
“What are you doing?” Caspian asked. My surroundings came back to me. He and Brandon must have realized we weren’t following and walked back to us. Caspian looked over with assessing eyes while Brandon stood behind him, distrust lingering in his stance as he eyed Mothman’s proximity to me.
My face was even hotter now. I felt like I was caught doing something wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, feeling guilty about how I kept clinging to Mothman.
Caspian said nothing as his eyes shifted to Mothman apathetically. There was a natural violence about Caspian that I’d never noticed before. It was coiled in his muscles. When Mothman and him fought earlier, I realized how intimidating he could be. He towered over nearly everyone yet moved fluid and fast. He was a predator.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Ava,” Caspian said as he walked over and pulled me close. Mothman made a frustrated sound but let Caspian take me. He stuck close though, not letting Caspian bully him into putting too much distance between us. I really hoped they wouldn’t fight again.
