Pine Needles (Veil Realms Series) (13 page)

Pivoting back I start to walk away when
Rayden’s assertive voice comes from behind me as he shouts, “Hey, where are you going?” 

“
I’m just going to walk the area. You have to keep watch at all times, Rayden.”

“Do you know your way around this place?” Narrowing his gaze he takes two steps directly in front of me
and confronts, “Tell me Selene, what do you know?”

“I know enough,”
I retort glancing back at the others bunched together, dropping my voice I add, “Unimaginable creatures, Rayden. Plants that eat flesh and bone, and on top of all this madness each warlord that hunts us has the ability to see us, smell us, and sense us with their own astute capabilities.” I begin to maneuver around him when I feel his hand against my shoulder, his thumb strokes back and forth smoothly along my skin. “We will be safe once we get to the barrier. How did you get through the veil?” I ask but am interrupted by a woman’s voice drawing his attention away.

“Rayden?” I’m a little taken back with
her friendly presence with him and how she scrutinizes us. The wheels churn in my distrusting mind, was she watching us? I toss my assumptions away and turn facing her. A plethora of platinum hair hangs over her slender shoulders. Clothes raked with grime and various gashes which are not uncommon to see here, reflecting over her impersonal face.

I instinctively utter the words out, “Do I know you?”  

Without hesitation she retorts back, “Oh my lord, Rayden… her eyes. They’re… she’s one of—”

“Louisa!
Enough!” Rayden cuts her off harshly as if he’s scolding a child.

“Selene, this
is Louisa Kincaid, um—she was with me the day the quake hit.”

“Your client?”

“Yes, my client.”

“Rayden, how long has it been since I’ve been gone?” My skittish tone wavers a bit, becoming more unresolved by the second.

“Over a year.”

Inside, my mind
wants to shut everything off, absorbing only his information. Painfully, I force that burning, manifesting ache away and swallow down my broken heart. Louisa commits a penetrating look right through me and then at Rayden with a nervous anticipation riddling her. Something is not right with her, with him, and this entire situation. Her attempt to self-assure herself lingers on him as she grasps his arm. She changes the subject and asks, “What will we do for food and water?  Rayden, they took all our supplies.”

“I’ll be back
. I can find what we need without the commotion from our pack.” Sending him a reassuring glance I wade through the wave of barricading plants.

Rayden yells out his disapproval to me, “Selene, I hate to be the one to point out the obvious, but you don’t have any weapons!”

I don’t even attempt to turn around to acknowledge his spiel. I broadcast back, “I don’t need any!” I amble onward and conceal my grin as Tiffany joins me and I have to have to ask, “What are you doing?”

“I’m coming with you,”
she voices as her antsy trait emerges and she bites on her worn, brittle nails stopping long enough to say, “besides you might need some help.” Peeking through her long bangs I catch a subtle hint of a smile as she glances back at me.    

I welcome the silence that resides with us allowing me the chance to scope the parameter. Tiffany vigilantly swoops a look back about every five seconds or so. As we hike deeper into the condemning jungle, a shutter of a breeze passes by us and our eyes meet simultaneously. A sweet honeysuckle scent raptures each receptor within me and I have this bazaar hunch that I could close my eyes and lead
myself straight to the appetizing aroma.

Our ba
re feet dash over any hindrance of jumbled roots and unsmooth capricious ground, til we near a path and along this path are miniature dwarf-like trees. Multiple trees interknit in an intimate embrace creating a spectacle of a periwinkle blue paradise. Tiffany reaches out delicately with her hand and collects two ball-shaped fruits. She peels the first odd outer layer off and then the next like an orange and hands it to me.

“Yavoro, it’s delicious. Nevaeh taught me
that this fruit is only produced when the Yavo and Ormon trees grow together.” Her eager stare follows my hand as I venture a bite. A syrupy blue substance trickles past my lips making me smile as I wipe the stickiness away.

“It’s extremely sweet,” I mumble to her
. Pleased, she turns and gathers a curved husk lying on the ground and begins accumulating as many as she can in her make-shift bowl. “Nevaeh taught you about all the plants here?”

“Yes, Nevaeh told me I was under Sirius’s protection and that no harm would come to me. The day they took you out of the cell she came to me and said I was allowed to join them each night to harvest the ‘sweetmeat’ as they call it. I saw glimpses of what they did to the other women. So, I was more than ready to
get the hell out of there and leave with her. There is something that’s bothering me though…” She trails off so I encourage her to continue.

Nudging her elbow I ask,
“What’s that?”

“Well…
I don’t understand, Selene. They have so much food in this place, why do they… you know.” She stiffly shrugs her shoulders not wanting to explain it any further.

“It’s embedded into their being,” I state in matter of fact manner bending down I help gather the Yavoro. I peer over to her timeworn beige clothing and her malnourished body and
I give a gentle shove to her hand holding a ripened fruit. “Eat.” The more I don’t want to face it the more it becomes real for me. I act like Sirius, voice my concerns in a way Sirius would, and even… sound like him. Concern for someone I care for, wanting them to have nourishment and protection outweighs any other worries I may have.

Her timid voice pulls me ou
t of my engrossed introspection. “Did you want to be changed into one of them Selene?” The question wasn’t a shock, but the all-consuming sadness written in her expression strikes at my heart hard.

“No, I did not.” Exploring our ever-blue haven one more time I focus back to
her. Studying her face I explain, “Sirius took me aboveground, and there were these creatures called the Carvi, they attacked us. Sirius told me to run and I did exactly as he commanded, but eventually I came to a cliff and I jumped without a second thought. At the time I had no choice, the two options were to be eaten alive or die from the fall.” I roll the fruit around in my palm feeling the velvety texture, glancing away briefly as a pang of remorse simmers through me and I softly breathe out, “Sirius saved me, and converted me so I could live.”

Chapter Fifteen

Stalking

My scrutinizing eyes o
bserve her cram her third Yavoro into her mouth, wiping the sticky liquid from her lips. “Why have you not been eating properly?” I ask shifting myself from one knee to the other.

She eases down into the dirt
, relaxing as she sits, slanting her head to the side. My own knees sink further into the ground watching her collect the fruit. I start interrogating her to see if she’s had enough to eat, and also prodding her about how she’s feeling. Finally about the last time she slept. A light chuckle flows from her as she plucks the Yavoro from the petite limbs. “You sound just like Nevaeh. I guess… I didn’t eat much because I didn’t care anymore.”

I pile one more fruit
in our arms and dart a look at her before I stand up advising her, “Well you better care now, because one way or another I fully plan on finding a way out of here. Come, we better head back to the others.” 

We journey our path back
, cross-examining each other in regards to what we’ve discovered about this perplexing realm.

“So everything here is game? You know my father used to go out hunting with a couple of our neighbors
years ago and I could never understand it. I mean we had food, plenty of food but one day he told me he did it simply because he could. But its different here, isn’t Selene?  It’s survival, prey or predator,” she admits with her eyes glued to me.  I give a solemn nod as we dodge the beetling vines and a crowd of over-sized leaves she establishes her steady gait behind me.

“
Hey… um… Selene?”

Shifting around a clump of leathery conifers and massive ferns I
contort my body to glance back. “Yes?”

“Who’s that guy you were talking to, you know him
don’t you?” She feebly stumbles over a few of the thickset vines, making a rustling sound which reverberates throughout the Jurassic-like jungle. A loud skin crawling thud redirects our attention to the west side of us.

The humid air strums a sudden eerie vibe and I become perfectly still. I
begin scanning and rescanning from the top of the canopy all the way down to the supple undergrowth. I’m unable to locate the immediate sound and my body begins to feed on the impenetrable fear, keeping the adrenaline pumping and thumping through my veins. Seconds pass, and then nerve-twitching minutes, but silence is the only thing that elapses and finally, I take in a dry ragged breath.

“I can’t seem to pick up anything,”
I declare, quietly she inches up beside me, her sharp ever-green eyes stare into the uncharted foreign landscape as I mutter softly out, “Do you see or hear anything Tiff?”

Mystified she shakes her head in reply, “I don’t even see the Ketibals or the other things that usually live out here.” Roaming our eyes over the area we had just heard the sound come from, only to find nothing for the cause. She whispers so close to me I can feel her breath against my skin, “But you can sense things like they do, can’t you Selene?”

“I can see thermal images, any being that possess a pulse I can detect.”

“Well?”
she whispers.

Leaning nex
t to her I calmly whisper back, “We are being watched.” I motion my chin forward, a silent directive to emulate my headway through the bristling, condense leafage. Whatever it is remains a distance about fifty yards away. My ardent muscles scream and yearn inside to flee, but my deep-seated vital instincts rein my control. Tiffany is unmistaken in her remark, no other creatures present themselves. No sounds play the lonely harmony of the untamed jungle, only the unusual mercurial clicks and murmuring snarls from the primary beasts of the wild.

Predators
… and this one in particular is watching us. As heedful and observant as we can be we jaunt past the undergrowth, as a discharge of bittersweet light sweeps out spilling the first drops of a new day through the heavy dew-crowned leaves.

Rayden meets us on the outskirts of our some what safe sanctuary, hands on his hips and his jaw clenches
together I note as we approach. “What took you so long?” I give Tiffany my supply of fruit and she heads off to the others.

“We have company,”
I report. His eyes narrow and immediately glance around us but I carry on, “It’s only one creature so far, possibly a scout of some kind.”

Directing a finger at the object in his hand I inquire, “What’s that?” 

A smug expression meets my own as he glares back and says, “A weapon.”

“It’s a stick, Rayden.”

“No, it’s a spear, Selene, and I shouldn’t have let you two go alone.”

Tenderly, I place my hand over his muscular chest and feel his racing heart.
The secrecy of time gives us the briefest moment to reflect over each other, to see the deeply seeded scars this world has implanted on each of us. Deprived from his touch for far too long I savor each caress from his fingertips as he quietly outlines my features. Ever so slowly his diligent hands remove the golden headpiece woven into my hair and my raven colored strands flow freely around my golden painted face.

“You’re still just as beautiful as I remember Selene.” His words hover mildly as he leans in to kiss me, but a blustering crunch of branches breaking apart has us both whip
ping around to discover Louisa treading actively toward us.

Th
e next instant she’s wedged herself in-between us as she glances over at me with suspicion, her tone is clipped with ire, “Where’s the water? Did you not bring any water for us?”   

Before I have a chance to answer she turns addressing Rayden, “Jack said he found a slope and if we follow it we might find a creek or maybe a river.”

“Unfortunately, Selene knows this area better than any of us.  Do you think there is a chance we can find water close by?” He glances at me waiting for my answer.

“The Yavoro fruit we brought back will contain a great source of water,”
I answer holding my stern gaze with Louisa as I direct my words at Rayden. “But I imagine there is some type of water resource close by.”

Tiffany joins us and offers me a couple of the Yavoro that’s left and faces Rayden and Louisa
she directs, “Over there,” she points a delicate finger opposite of us toward the shaded ground. “There are Bloodwoods you can dig the roots up and remove the bark and suck the moisture from them.” A disgusted expression spoils Louisa’s flawless face. Tiffany subtly clasps my hand and returning my thoughts back to her she declares, “We need to rest, Selene, come on.”