Page 25 of Savage Blooms
In the end, it wasn’t a discussion. Eileen yanked andNicola pulled and Finley gave Adam a firm shove on the back, and the next thing Adam knew he was half-stumbling down the hillside. Eileen grabbed Finley’s hand like her life depended on it, and Nicola clutched Adam’s good wrist as they stumbled over stones and heather, two pairs of frightened mortal creatures fleeing an encounter with the supernatural.
Adam’s lungs screamed for air as their jostling turned into a flat-out run once they reached the grazing green. The clouds rolled meanly above them, like they were chasing them down.
No matter how far away from the cave he got, Adam could still feel that ache in his bones, begging him to stay. And through the scent of turned earth and macerated grass, Adam could still smell cherry tarts and longing.
Overhead, the skies cracked open, dousing them with rain.
CHAPTER TEN
Nicola
Nicola was soaked by the time they got back to the house. Her teeth chattered as she ducked through the door, and she shed her sweater immediately. It hit the hardwood floor with a wet slap as Adam ducked in behind her.
Finley and Eileen lagged behind, moving agonizingly slow up the path as Eileen struggled to breathe. The lord was leaning heavily on her groundskeeper, and in the end, Finley had to carry her bridal-style the last fifty feet and over the threshold. Eileen protested loudly, trying her damnedest to twist out of his grasp.
“Put me down. I don’t need to be toted around like a toddler.”
Nicola locked the door behind them, breathing a little easier with solid wood between her and whatever was out there on the grounds. It wasn’t that she had no senseof what she had just encountered. It was that she had a very good idea of what had just happened, and that scared her even more.
Fairy stories were fun when they were pressed between the pages of a book, just cultural memory and dead ink. They weren’t supposed to come to life.
“You’re embarrassing me,” Eileen snapped, swatting at Finley. She looked dangerously pale in the warm lighting of Craigmar’s chandeliers, with tendrils of hair sticking to her neck like the tentacles of an octopus. There wasn’t a drop of color in her lips.
“You’re embarrassing yourself,” Finley grunted. “Now stop struggling or I’ll sling you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.”
“To hell with you,” Eileen spat.
“You pushed yourself too hard. You need rest.”
“I can do as I please in my own house, on my own land. Are you lord now or am I?”
“I’m the only one with common sense; you figure out the rest.”
Adam and Nicola stood dripping mud onto the expensive rugs underfoot, sharing an awkward glance. Nicola’s heart was still pounding. She would be hearing those tiny golden bells in her dreams for days to come.
Eileen and Finley bickered for a moment more before he put her down with a huff.
Adam shook the water from his hair like a dog and Finley looked every inch a bedraggled cat who had falleninto a tub. Eileen began to fastidiously pin back her hair and wipe the stray droplets from her face. It reminded Nicola of a war-rumpled lioness cleaning blood from her claws.
“Well,” Eileen said, stomping down the hallway towards the kitchen, “I hope you’re very happy with yourself, Adam. Now they’ve got a taste for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Adam demanded, all but tearing down the hallway after Eileen. Nicola followed close after while Finley trudged behind, sulky.
In the kitchen, Eileen swatted on the tap and filled up the gooseneck kettle. Once that was boiling, she tossed open a cupboard and retrieved a first-aid kit, which she then threw down on the small wooden table in the kitchen. The table was an ancient, banged-up thing, probably used more for preparing food than entertaining.
“Sit,” Eileen ordered. “All of you. Adam, let’s have a look at that hand.”
“I’ll do it,” Nicola said as she took the seat nearest to Adam. She didn’t think Eileen would hurt Adam, but she trusted herself with him more.
“Have it your way,” Eileen said. “He doesn’t want my help, anyway.”
Nicola scrubbed her hands clean with goat milk soap in the large farmhouse sink, then gingerly took Adam’s wounded hand. There was a semicircle of puncture wounds on the top of his hand, and a few to match onthe palm underneath. They were real and undeniable, inflamed and red, still weeping water and blood.
They didn’t look quite like animal bite marks, nor quite like the indentation of human teeth.
It was more like Adam had been bitten by a human mouth full of very sharp animal teeth, but Nicola tried not to dwell on that too much.
“It was the iron that kept them away, wasn’t it?” Nicola asked as she ripped open an alcohol cloth and retrieved some bandages. She watched Eileen warily, trying to play this right. Perhaps Nicola had been too naive earlier, too swept up in the beauty and romance of a Scottish whirlwind vacation to notice all the warning signs. Eileen knew more than she was telling, and there was something dark just beneath the surface of this place, like rot beneath floorboards. And while it probably would have sounded crazy to most other people, Nicola was willing to make an educated guess about what kind of sickness might be in the bones of Craigmar. “That brooch you wear. And they didn’t bother Finley because of his earrings.”
