Out of the Dark (4 page)

Sly.

In all the years Luke had been doing this sort of work, he'd been hit on the head with falling rocks, shit on by swarms of startled bats, even been turned around a few times just like this. He'd seen caverns hundreds of feet below the earth with ceilings four stories high and he'd crawled through tunnels so tight he'd had to push himself one shoulder at a time. Until now, though, he'd never, ever been afraid of anything that might have been in the dark.

Adam was probably right. Just the GeoCom guys messing with them, getting the jump as he'd told Celia the night before. This business could be cutthroat and if what they'd found down here already today was worth even one-tenth of what Luke guessed it might be, it might be well worth GeoCom's time to try and sabotage the MineSys operation.

And yet…something didn't feel right about this. GeoCom had a rep for underhanded business, but Luke didn't believe even the most hard-core member of the opposite team would put anyone in danger. Besides, the farmer who'd found this cave had been convincing about the fact he'd called MineSys first—said he'd seen them written up in one of his magazines.

An hour later Pete could no longer insist he knew the way because every single one of his chalk marks had been erased, some but not all replaced by others drawn in sneaky, similar fashion so that it was hard to tell they were fakes until the group navigated down some passage or stumbled into a cavern that none of them recognized. It was unprofessional and stupid for them to be lost this way. Ridiculous.

It was terrifying.

Worse was Jeff's mumbling, getting louder and louder, about how fucked they were. Adam's constant looking over his shoulder. Terry's sniping. They'd been a good team, but now they were falling apart.

“Everyone,” Luke said suddenly. “Just shut the hell up, okay? Stop. We're going to get out of here. If nothing else, Farmer Fuhrman up there knows when we came in, and if we don't come out in a few more hours, he's going to call someone to find us.”

“Great,” Terry said. “Just a few more hours.”

Luke had never wanted to punch another man in the face as much as he wanted to clock Terry. But just then Pete let out a hoarse cry of relief. He slapped the wall of the tunnel they'd just come through, crawling on their bellies.

“This is it! This is the way! I remember for sure because I stopped to take a piss—“

“Damn it, Pete,” Adam broke in.

Pete didn't pay any attention. “This is the way! I know it!”

“Just like you knew the last four times?”

Luke couldn't hold back any longer. He shoved Terry by the shoulder. “Shut up, Terry. Listen to Pete so we can get out of here.”

“When I find those GeoCom shits,” Adam muttered, “I swear I'm going to kick their asses.”

“I just want a shower and a cold beer.” Jeff sounded way perkier than he had, already following Pete through a low-ceilinged corridor.

“I see light!” Pete hollered.

Luke looked up, searching for the light, and instead found nothing but more darkness.

He'd fallen so fast and hard he didn't realize it at first, but then the pain exploded in him. Not just from the thud of his body against the rocks as he plummeted through a hole in the cave floor that hadn't been there moments ago when the others crossed it. Slashing, ripping agony tore through his ankle, then his back. He opened his mouth to scream. Something leathery and foul, reeking of spoiled meat, shoved inside to choke him silent. The pain and pressure in his ankle released, but then a hot wind blew over him as the sound of something flapping hummed in his ears. Flapping like wings. He pushed back, scrambling over hidden terrain as his headlight bounced wildly. He hit a wall and a cascade of rocks and dirt fell over him, making him cough and choke again.

He'd fallen about twenty feet into a cavern so vast from side-to-side his light couldn't even touch the sides of it. The hole through which he'd fallen—no, not fallen. Been pulled, his mind said. He'd been yanked through that hole by his ankles, which throbbed and ached. He lifted his pant leg to look at the blood oozing from four puncture wounds just above the top of his boot. He spat, then again, to clear his mouth of the horrible taste. He looked up to the ceiling, noting how the hole that had been big enough to fit his entire six-foot-two frame had filled in, leaving a mounded hill of dirt, debris and boulders that would've made a convenient ladder up to the cavern's roof…if there'd been any sign of an exit left.

Dust had covered his headlight, but the helmet had protected his head from damage. Looking at the size of the rocks that had thumped down all around him and feeling the ache from where one or two of them had punched him in the back and shoulders, Luke knew he was lucky he was still conscious. He wiped his fingers across the light, clearing it, but it flickered when he touched it. The glass felt cracked. He'd fallen on his pack, the extra flashlight digging into the small of his back. He rolled off it to dig inside. Found his water bottle, the protein bars he always packed. A first-aid kit he'd need to use on his ankle in a few minutes. But for now, he needed light.

He could hear the faintest sound of shouting, and another slew of rocks and dirt slid down from the place he'd come through the floor. Still no sign of the hole. He shone both lights up and up, across the ceiling, searching for any hint of light or sign of the place he'd fallen through.

“Holy shit.” Luke tried to say it aloud, but his throat would make nothing more than the hoarsest croak.

He'd been in caverns covered with bats before. The things he saw clung to the roof like bats, they had the same leathery skin as bats, but they were not bats. The size of a fifth grader, human in form but for the overlong fingers and toes that helped them cling to every crevice. Human eyes blinked, shining red in the wash of light from his headlamp, and the creatures hissed at him. A fresh wave of that stink reached him, and Luke put a hand over his mouth and nose to fight from retching.

They moved as one, crawling the surface of the cave. The hissing got louder. Luke got to his feet, hopping on his wounded ankle and hunched from the pain in his back, but dammit, moving. At the base of the pile of dirt and debris that had fallen along with him, he found a severed…paw was the only way to describe it. Thick claws coated in blood. His blood, he thought as the room spun and he fought to keep the shadows from taking him.

Above him, the hissing got louder. It burned his eardrums, poking like pins inside his head. Like voices, but none that he could decipher. Had he been clocked on the head harder than he'd thought? But no, a quick shine of his light up to the roof again showed him the same things. They didn't recoil from the light this time.

They focused on it.

And then they came down.

All of them at once, burying him in a pile of reeking, leathery flesh and claws that tore at him. Teeth that fought to find his flesh. He hit one of them with the heavy flashlight, breaking the bulb but sending the creature screaming into the dark. Another. Then another. Rocks fit into his fists, became weapons. He kicked and punched. He found his voice when one of them sunk its teeth into the tender webbing between his thumb and forefinger, when the flesh tore, when the thing tore away a chunk of him.

Again and again he fought as the hissing whispers got louder, searing his eardrums. The stink rose, too, until he choked with it. Writhing, Luke hit out again and again. Screams of pain and fury rose around him, not echoing in the cavern but inside his skull. Bones crunched. Blood coated him.

He fought.

He killed.

Later, much later, Luke would eventually give in and agree with the version of the story that said the cave simply collapsed beneath his feet a few feet from the exit. He would stop insisting that something had punched through the cave floor and pierced his ankle with thick talons, the same kind that carved up his back and chest. He would accept the explanation of a blow to the head, coupled with a cave-in, for his injuries. Later he'd smile and nod at whatever the doctors said so he could just get the hell out of the hospital. He'd convince them he believed their “truth.”

But all of that was a lie.

Something had taken him into the dark and tried to hurt him, and he'd hurt back.

And something was still out there.

 

A knock at her door in the middle of the night should've surprised her, but some part of Celia had been waiting for the past six months to find Luke on her doorstep. She couldn't have said why. Wishful thinking? Maybe the dreams she'd had about him in all his naked glory, so vivid she'd woken with his flavor still in her mouth and her skin tingling from his touch. Or maybe it was just some inexplicable sense of inevitability that had been with her since the morning after the night they'd spent together, a hovering sense of…not urgency, but something the opposite of that.

Of waiting.

Still, she was cautious when she cracked open the door to peek out. She was expecting to see a grinning Luke, maybe with something silly like flowers or a stuffed toy he'd picked up from the gas station. That, she realized at once, was really wishful thinking. If it had been that man on the front porch, she might easily have teased him with a pout and a shake of her finger scolding him for showing up unannounced. The smile died on her lips when she saw who really stood there waiting for her to open the door, which she did immediately and all the way.

The Luke she'd met at Frog's Hollow had been loose-limbed and funny, with a lightness about him that had been incredibly appealing. The man standing on her front porch was anything but light. He wore worn jeans, battered and scuffed boots, a dark T-shirt beneath a plaid shirt of black and gray. His brown leather jacket was a total cliché, roughed up and scratched like he'd worn it in a tumble off a motorcycle going eighty around Deadman's Curve. And, she saw as she looked past him to the snowy yard, there was the motorcycle.

“Luke?” First, a question. Then an invitation. “Luke.”

He came through the door with a hesitating, one-two step, pushing past her with his hands shoved in his pockets. He didn't look at her, not straight on, and this disturbed her more than the scent of liquor that wafted from him or the scruff of beard on cheeks more hollow than she'd remembered. He leaned, one hand on the newel post and one heavy boot propped on the bottom step.

“I should've called first. I'm sorry.”

“No. It's okay.” Celia looked at her flannel jammies, thinking that if he had called, she might've put on something a little more substantial. Or at least sexier. “Come on in.”

She took him straight to the kitchen, not through the living room and definitely not through the dining room. There she waved a hand at the table and watched him take a seat while he still avoided her eyes. Without asking, she put a beer and a plateful of cheese and crackers in front of him. He opened the beer and took a long drink, but didn't touch the food. When she sat in the chair next to his and took his hand, she felt the twitch and flex of his fingers, but he didn't pull away.

“I was hoping I'd see you again.” She'd meant to sound playful and sexy. Light. She missed the mark by quite a bit, sounding sad instead, yet somehow unembarrassed that he might think she was the sort of desperate woman who clung to a one-nighter like it meant something more. Celia passed her fingertip lightly over Luke's knuckles. They were rough and bruised, and she kept the touch gentle. She looked at his face and waited until he met her eyes before speaking again.

She had to wait for what felt like a long time.

“I'm glad,” she said quietly, “you came to see me.”

Then she was on his lap, straddling him, his face cradled in her palms as his mouth opened beneath hers with a desperation that might've been scary if it hadn't been so fucking sexy. Luke broke the kiss with a small moan, but Celia didn't let him turn his head. She put her forehead to his, her hands holding his jaw as she used one thumb to caress his bottom lip. He closed his eyes, but that was okay. His cock pressed her through his jeans, she could feel that just fine, so whatever was stopping him had nothing to do with a lack of desire.

She rocked a little, pushing herself against the bulge in his jeans. The chair creaked as Luke gripped it on both sides. He hissed out a breath and moved to kiss her again, but Celia held his face tight in her hands and kept his mouth from hers. By the barest centimeter, sure, but still. She held him still until he opened his eyes and looked into hers. Celia brushed her lips on his, and when he again tried to kiss her hard, she pulled away just enough so that he could feel her breath on him, but not her touch.

Luke drew in a slow, shuddering breath. He let go of the chair and put his hands on the small of her back, pressing just barely as she rocked once more against him. When she added a small grind of her hips, he let out another tortured breath and swallowed hard. He pressed his face to the tops of her breasts, the skin bared by the opened buttons of her top. Heat pressed her, then moisture when he kissed her there. It was her turn to moan at the touch of his tongue along her collarbone, then the wet, firm pressure of his lips tugging at her tight nipples through the thin flannel.

She found the back of his neck, his skull, her fingers sliding through his short dark hair until she gripped, tight enough to make him mutter. She tipped his head back to look into his eyes. Luke's mouth was wet, his dark eyes fathomless and creased in the corners with more feathery lines than she remembered. The hair at his temples had gone silver. He'd aged in six months, from some sort of pain, that was clear enough, but it sat well upon his face.

“I'm glad,” Celia repeated slowly, voice low and steady, her gaze never shifting from his, “you came to see me.”

Luke shuddered, his every muscle going tight and then loose against her. He was bigger, could so easily have pushed her off him, could have lifted her the way he'd done that first night. But he didn't. His eyes closed briefly but opened when she tugged his hair again, though they went half-lidded when Celia pushed up on her toes to rub herself along his bulging cock.