Yeah, they are cool. Maybe the rest of us can learn a thing or two from them.
Emme doesn’t warm up to them like I do. To her credit, she’s not screaming. Don’t get me wrong, she looks like she’s doing a really bad version of an African tribal dance, one that would get her kicked out of the tribe and possibly stoned, but a heck of an effort regardless.
She kicks at the air, flaps her arms, and shakes out her hair. I march over to her, brushing off some of the larger, livelier bugs intent on nesting behind her ears and making babies.
“You all right?” I ask.
“No,” she squeaks. “My skin is crawling.”
I help her out of my flannel and give it a shake. “No worries, it’s just the bugs. Hey, look. These two are stuck together at the ass.”
She glares at me. This time, it’s not so cute. “I think it’s intentional, Bren.”
I give them another good look. “Oh, yeah.” I elbow her playfully. “Must be mating season down here at the lake.”
She covers her mouth like she’s ready to puke. “Must be,” she moans.
The moisture in the air clings the top Emme’s wearing closer to her skin. She has on one of those padded bras that women with smaller curves wear.
It kind of surprises me. Emme doesn’t need that. She’s cute and nice and yeah, sexy, all on her own. I offer her back my flannel shirt, hoping in a way that she doesn’t take it.
Emme is breathing really fast, her small chest lifting and falling as she trembles and continues to freak out. Her hands open and close as she threads them through the sleeves. She glances at them and rubs them together, carefully at first, then harder.
She looks up at me with her palms open. “They’re sticky. Why are they sticky?”
I don’t bother telling her it might be bug juice from all the crawlies she smacked at, she can probably guess as much. She does though, make a valid point.
Everything is sticky here, especially the air. Odd, since cool moisture is all we were exposed to on the way down. And it’s not like Tahoe is known as a humid region. Hell, the only way to find humidity around here is by sticking your ass in a sauna.
My heels dig into the sand as I back away from the wall and the last few bugs find a new home. With the exception of the few moonbeams poking through the sandy ceiling, the opened area is plenty dark.
The surrounding walls resemble drifts of loose volcanic rock, nothing like the tough surfaces we avoided as we trekked through the cave. There’s a light coat of dust, enough to muffle that scent I keep latching onto, yet not enough to erase it completely.
I take another deep breath, picking through all the aromas travelling through my nose, from the trickles of lake water, to the thin exoskeletons of the bugs, to Emme’s perfume, and back to that smell. There’s a bitterness to it, almost as pungent as the salty air I continue to sense, plus a tinge of something else.
My eyes fly open as I pinpoint exactly what this is.
Sex.
Lots and lots of sex.
I whip towards Emme. She continues to shake out her hair and bat at the invisible bugs she thinks are no-doubt burrowing through her scalp.
“Damn,” I say.
She crinkles her nose and pokes her tongue out briefly. “I can taste the stickiness,” she says. “It’s everywhere. Can you taste it, too?”
“Uh, huh,” I say, wishing we couldn’t.
Emme pauses. “You know what it is, don’t you?” she asks. I nod. She searches her surroundings. “Does this mean you know what this place is, too?”
“I have a pretty good idea,” I say, and that’s about it.
She gives another little tremble. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“Ah, sure.”
She stands there, waiting.
I stand there with my mouth firmly shut.
Emme is an angel. Innocent. Genuinely one of those types that believes in the good in others. She avoids the bad, all the time, just because she wants to see so much of that good.
I’m not one of those glass is half-full types. The glass is usually empty and bloody from the bastard that made me crack said glass over his skull.
It’s safe to say I’m definitely not Emme. Nope. That doesn’t mean I’m ready to come clean with the facts.
“Bren?” she says. “We’re here to find answers.” She shudders when another something lands on her head. It falls to the sand and scuttles away. “Just tell me what it is. Please. I’m not sure how much longer I can stay in this place.”
“You don’t want to know,” I assure her.
“I do if it means finding out what’s going on,” she insists.
“Just tell me,” she adds when I just look at her.
I give one last sniff. Yup. That’s what it is. “It’s a cat house, Emme. And I don’t mean the type Celia would hang out in.”
It’s like I’m watching the innocence flow right out of her.
Her mouth pops open and closes several times.
“You…this?” she stammers. She looks from the ground, to the ceiling, to her hands and turns what might be the cutest shade of green I’ve ever seen on a gal. “Why are you like this?”
I look around, like she can’t be possibly talking to me. “Why am I like what?”
She stamps her little foot and shoves her hands on her hips. “Males. I mean males. This is disgusting, Bren.”
My wolf agrees, still, I hold my ground, growing defensive. “Don’t blame me. It’s not my spunk spraying the walls and ceiling—”
She gasps. “Oh, my God. It’s on the ceiling?”
“I’m exaggerating.” I glance up, hoping that it’s just some kind of freak oil stain blurring the ceiling. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” she asks.
And there’s that adorable shade of green again.
“I think
