Page 58 of A Velvet Kiss After Dark

"I am not maniacal. You are a liar and a cheat!" Tabitha said vehemently.

"How would you know that if you don't even remember me?" Kane replied without hesitation.

"Because I know your type."

Kane laughed and it wasn't a pleasant sound. "You don't even know who I am according to you, and yet you assign all these negative ideations against me. You've lost your mind, woman. I don't know if you're under a spell, I simply pray that once the brew wears off, you'll be back to your usual self."

A vicious thunderclap boomed overhead, then without notice rain down poured from the sky. Tabitha and the entourage falsely imprisoning her became quickly encompassed in the warm rainwater as a massive deluge opened. Her clothes grew wet and slick against her, her hair flattened to her head; she blinked away rain and squinted to see through the angled downpour.

She pointed suddenly to the distance. "You're going the wrong way. It's that way."

The rain was so loud that the soft bleating of the camel-like creature she rode could no longer be discerned. Kane pulled her more tautly to him and they kicked up speed.

"How would you know where the castle is, Tabitha?" He sounded like he despised asking the question.

"I just know," she stated flatly.

"Seth found a map and found a good lead. We're going to follow it," he said.

He was leading them in the wrong direction. She couldn't describe why she knew what she did, she just sensed it. "You're wrong, Kánnérd. It's that way, I'm telling you the truth."

His patience at an end, Kane gazed skyward with his eyes closed and sucked in a long, slow breath of air to quell his ire. "I don't care what you think. As of right now, you're not even acting like yourself, Tabitha. We'll continue on until we get to the designated location and that's the end of it."

"You're wrong," she said sternly, but bit her lip to keep from speaking more. "And I hate the way you hold me."

He leaned down so that his mouth was near the shell of her ear, and in a soft voice said, "Is that a fact, Tabitha?"

Goosebumps bubbled over her arms and legs and she shivered at the reaction of his nearness. It was too intimate. Gulping hard, she swallowed her words, then reformed a dignitary pose with her spine straight as a rod.

"I told you before, and I'll say it again. I do not like you, so stop trying to slurp me up, wolfman."

He chuckled, a purely masculine sound, and she relinquished another shiver, but for a whole other reason.

They headed east for more than two hours. Tabitha had to repeatedly point to the north, stating that the castle was closer to there, but Kane refused to take her advisement. Meanwhile, her mind, feeling clearer than ever, ran a mile a minute.

Then, they met a vast and swampy gorge. Thick-trunk trees with massive roots emerged from the murky depths. Green algae and mosses grew amongst the roots. Areas bubbled with underwater lifeforms. Flying insects circled the cavernous depths in swarming hives that buzzed to the ears and portended the need of a strong insect repellent. From extended branches dripped long tendrils of green rope-like branches upon which grew slimy green leaves that looked gunky to the touch.

There was no way they could traverse this swamp. They'd need to go around it. Kane spoke to his team, disregarding her completely, and chose an alternate route to circumvent its pasture. Tabitha fumed under her breath, for it was the wrong direction. However, she bit down on her lip to keep from repeating the same thing over and over again; he obviously wasn't going to listen anyway.

The deluge had yet to settle, and the rain drenched them forthrightly. The warmth of the atmosphere kept her from shivering, and she loathed the man seated behind her. She planned to retreat and run far away. She knew the exact location of the relic. They weren't close, but they were closer than they had been, so perhaps he had a point about this so-called map the vampire Seth had found. Yet, she still felt a draw

If she had to hazard a guess, she assumed the castle was a mere hour and a half toward the left of where they were currently traveling. She did fear traveling alone, for she now had no weapons on her; she carried nothing but empty hands and a rain-drenched sundress.

"This isn't right, Kánnérd," Tabitha said to rebuke their current trajectory sometime later. "You're not going the right way."

He sighed heavily and pulled the animal they were riding to a stop. "Halt," he said to the team. "I need to stretch my legs."

Kane hopped down then assisted Tabitha down off the camel-creature. It bellowed and sent a glare their way before shucking its head low to munch on some sludgy grass.

Tabitha eyed the terrain. Desert behind her, swamp to the left, desert to the right, and their aim directly ahead. Her gut pulled her, as if by magic, as if some unearthly thing was luring her in the direction she needed to go.

Darkness descended upon them with the onslaught of night. While the team spoke in hushed tones and peered over at her about her "memory loss", Tabitha smiled sweetly at them as she perched herself on a tree root beneath to shield her from the rain. The wolfs gobbled down nutritional bars, and Kane even offered her one at one point, but she stuck her nose in the air and carried on with her real goal: the bindings at her wrists. As she pretended to roll her shoulders in pain to loosen muscles that weren't actually sore, she actually was working herself free from her captivity, and they were none the wiser.

22

It was too easy. Tabitha couldn't reconcile, but it was as if some otherworldly magic were at work. Perhaps had lost her mind. She was hallucinating.

She struggled to recall her last name. "Burke," Kane had said to her. Yet, the name sounded as foreign as the language the demons in Hell spoke.

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