Lifting his flashlight, he used it to explore as far down the cave as he could. It revealed about thirty feet before the darkness became an impenetrable wall. That wall meant he couldn’t see whatever might be hiding deeper in the cave, but they would see the glow of his beam as he approached.
He turned the light off.
“What are you doing?” Brie whispered.
“Someone has been here recently; we can’t let them see us coming if they're here now.”
Brie tried not to shudder as she pictured all kinds of monsters slinking through the shadows, watching and waiting to pounce as they approached. However, she also didn’t like the idea of continuing into the gloom.
Once they moved away from the entrance, she wouldn’t see anything, even with her extremely good eyesight. But she’d still have her sense of smell and hearing; they would have to be enough.
“I don’t smell Savages and demons here,” she whispered.
“Let’s hope that means they’re not here.”
Asher removed his knife from its holster. He’d far prefer his gun, but he couldn’t take the chance of shooting in the dark. The last thing he needed was to accidentally take out Brie or have it ricochet and kill them both.
Instead, he stretched his hand out to her, and when she clasped it, they walked into the cave until the shadows enveloped them. Asher kept his hand against the wall as he let it guide him deeper into the earth. Cool and damp beneath his fingers, the temperature of the stones reflected the air as it grew chillier the farther they progressed.
No footsteps, sniffles, or breathing came from ahead, but the steady drip of water falling into a pool came from somewhere within the cavern. The damp, rank aroma of the earth and the minerally tang of rocks filled the air.
If there were demons and Savages down there, they’d start to smell them as they got closer. He almost turned his flashlight on again before thinking better of it. They still weren’t sure what lay ahead, and he couldn’t give away their location.
Brie’s hand was warm in his as their fingers intertwined perfectly together. She walked so close to his side their hands brushed their thighs as they moved. And then, she stopped and jerked him to a halt with her.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-NINE
“Do you smell that?”she whispered.
“No.”
But that wasn’t surprising; his senses were far better than any humans, but they weren’t as sharp as a purebred vampire’s.
“Savages?” he whispered.
“I’m not sure. It smells like death and something rotten, but it’s an older scent. Like it’s been dead for a little while, but it’s strong, if that makes any sense. It’s not… right.”
Brie couldn’t quite describe what she was smelling, mostly because it was familiar and yet entirely unfamiliar. She was used to the reek of Savages and the metallic scent of blood, but this wasn’t that… not completely. She didn’t understand it, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
She had no way of knowing if the stone was somewhere near the horrible scent, but she had a feeling it was. Everything inside her screamed against going forward, but she continued to put one foot in front of the other as she held Asher’s hand. The further they progressed, the worse the stench became.
They walked another twenty feet before Asher detected what Brie had described. His nose wrinkled against the aromas of decay and the coppery tang of blood, but she was right, it wasn’t the scent of a Savage.
It was familiar yet strange and wrong in a way he couldn’t quite place, but it was bad. He did not doubt it.
And the further they traveled, the worse and more revolting the smell became until it coated his nostrils with the rot of flesh, and the taste of death permeated his tongue. He hesitated at the possibility they could be walking into a den of Savages, but though they smelled of garbage and rot, this smell wasnotthe same.
But they continued onward through the winding cave and deeper into the earth. The rocks grew colder against his fingers, and goose bumps covered his skin when he stepped on something that broke as it crunched beneath his foot.
He stopped to stare blindly ahead of him.What was that?
Unexpected nausea rolled through Brie as the awful crunch bounced off the walls, but the sound was too low for it to echo throughout the cave. However, it seemed to come from all around them until she almost screamed from the hideousness of it.
Unable to stay there, she lifted her foot and compelled herself to continue. When she brought it down, something snapped.
She couldn’t quite figure out what made the noise. It felt like a stick beneath her foot and sounded like one, but why was there a stick this far down in a cave system? Unless they’d stumbled across some kind of animal nest and they had their dead, rotten food down here.
Images of rodents building their homes deep within these tunnels erupted in her head, and she had to cover her mouth to keep from throwing up. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was rats.
