CAGED (#3, of Crows and Thorns)

Chapter 58

The wraith-wolf's attention was fixed on Nelle who lowered her hand from her mouth to brace the heel of her palm upon the granite counter and drum her fingernails. "Where do you go every day?"

The bed's woodwork glistened with sunlight as I ducked under its curved latticed shape. The mattress dipped beneath my weight when I sat down on its edge and tugged my socks on. Leaning over, I slid my feet into my new boots, zipping them up and buckling the straps. Angling my head toward her I replied, "Tell me the name of your favorite book and I'll tell you where I go."

She rolled her eyes and heaved a bored sigh at my desire to continue our game. Leaning her back against the kitchen counter she folded her arms across her chest. Raising her gaze to the ceiling, she pursed her mouth to the side, thinking about it. There was a glint of cunning that sharpened the honeyed flecks in her eyes when her gaze slid my way. "Let Me Go by...um, I forget his name...Ishiguro?"

Let Me Go. Much the same as her favorite song, Set Me Free. While that latter had hurt as she'd intended it to, this time the point she was trying to make didn't. Swiping my thumb across my lower lip, I hid the grin. "Kazuo Ishiguro?"

"Yes, that's him." Her smile became cocky. She moved to lean her hip on the counter's edge and the skirt of her dress swayed around her slender calves. "I loved his book—Let Me Go."

I rose off the bed and strolled lazily around Sage to the kitchen. Standing before her, she craned her neck back and didn't stop me from plucking free a few tiny leaves that had tangled in her silken hair. I really wanted to wrap my fingers around the nape of her neck, pull her in and kiss the smugness off her pouty lips, instead, I settled for this, "I believe the title of Kazuo Ishiguro's book is Never Let Me Go."

The cockiness slipped from her slack features with the knowledge she'd got the name wrong and that it meant something else entirely. Her rage erupted into a fearsome itch all over my body. It was the same irrational rage that had burned through me this morning and unsettled my nerves as I'd tinkered with the Ducatis, worrying that it was going to spill over into Nelle's reckless spitefulness.

Shifting further around, I bent over and opened up a cupboard door to toss the leaves into the trash bin hidden behind it. "The catacombs," I replied to her question, hoping to extinguish her anger.

Startled, her pissy mood dampened as she pushed off the counter and took a step closer. Her indelible scent saturated the air and I dragged it into my lungs like sweetened poison.

Nelle's narrowed gaze raked down my battle-clad figure. "What are you doing in the catacombs? What are you looking for down there?"

Every morning I met Mela and Petra and their hunting party, bringing a team of my own to the dank catacombs beneath Ascendria. It was safer in numbers since the rabbit warren of caves and tunnels were crawling with krekenns. Petra had found fresh trails, some with false endings, one leading deep into the bowels of the earth. It was a tangle of trails as if the creature we were hunting was trying to keep its new nest hidden. So far there'd been no sighting of the nest or the lesser creature either.