Alive (The Crave) (7 page)

Eve looked over the railing, down into the grand living area on the first floor. Even after their tussle with the jenks and the heated kiss they shared, she had still been floored with the sight that greeted her eyes. She had imagined what the inside of the house would look like a million times and yet her imagination had severely failed.

The vast room was huge, the floors made of a gray stone that complimented the medium wood color of the walls. Leather furniture, the color of rich mahogany sat in the center of the room. A massive stone fireplace was to the left that looked big enough to fit five regular-sized ones inside. Over the fireplace hung the mounted head of a large elk. The spread of its antlers wider than Eve was tall. More animal heads were mounted on the walls of the large square room, deer, a longhorn, a ram, a buffalo, an antelope, a wild boar, and others that Eve didn’t recognize.

The animal heads weren’t what made her imagination pale in its image. It was the sweeping staircase that twisted around the edge of the room, each floor exposed so that anyone on the upper levels could look over the wood railing into the living area. A colossal chandelier hung from the ceiling of the top floor, suspended on a thick silver chain the dark crystalline jewels sparkled in the afternoon sun that shone through curtain-less windows on each floor. The crystals were a grayish color. Not clear like a normal chandelier, but dark and dazzling, drawing the onlooker in. There were so many of them they seemed to go on and on and forever in their glistening perfection. It was the chandelier that held her attention so completely. Even as she climbed the stairs after Gage, helping him check all of the rooms on the second floor, her gaze kept coming back to the glittering fixture.

Eve stepped back from the railing and looked at the chandelier.
I bet just one of those crystals is worth a fortune.
A plan started to evolve in her head. The fixture which held the great centerpiece must have started to rot or had become weaker over time because the sparkling jewels hung close to the railing of the second floor opposite from where she stood now. She could even bet that if she stood on the railing on that side that she could easily reach out and touch them.

I want one of those jewels.
Just like the money from cash drawer—she had to have it. She shifted her weight, hefting her pack. The weight was on the verge of unbearable, but one of those jewels wouldn’t add too much too it.
It would be so easy to pull one off…or two.

Her pulse jumped at the thought. She’d hoped there would be valuable things in here, but she didn’t bargain on there being something like that.

“Eve? Did you hear what I said?”

Eve glanced at Gage. His handsome features were still tense, a look that he’d worn since she’d pushed him away. It really irked her, because if anyone had any reason to be tense, it was her. He was the one who kissed her to prove a point.

“You pushed your brother down the stairs.”

His eyes narrowed. “My mom thought I did, but I didn’t. He tripped over his shoe string and fell.” He looked back at the stairs. “He broke both of his arms. He was in casts for months.”

“I remember that.” Living in a small town it was hard to miss things like a boy having two casts on his arms in grade school. She had been jealous at the time. She was only six years old and Collin had had a blue cast and a green one. Everyone signed them. She could remember the chicken scratch designs on each one as he’d walked down the hall. At the time she hadn’t equated them with pain, but the fact that they were cool. Thinking back on it she was glad that something like that hadn’t happened to her.

Her parents would have equated it with the evil sin they swore followed her every step.
“God’s way of trying to send you back to hell.”
Her mom had said to her once. Such a loving family. The memory of the white cast that had covered her arm tried to push its way to the front of her mind.
No.
She shoved it away.

“My brother told her I didn’t push him, but I could tell she didn’t believe either of us.”

Eve looked at Gage, taking in his side-profile.
Why is he telling me this?

“It was when he got those damned things off that everything changed. No one blamed me after that.”

Eve furrowed her brow and a second later it hit her. “It was breaking his arms that made him so good at baseball, right?” He had been a legend now that she thought about it. She never attended a sports game in her life, it wasn’t allowed, but she remembered the posters with his name on them plastered across the walls when she was a freshman and his brother was a senior.

“His fastest recorded pitch was one-hundred point two miles per hour.”

Eve made a non-committal sound. She didn’t know anything about baseball, but she acknowledged that it was probably pretty fast.

“You don’t think so?”

She looked at Gage, realizing that she had let her gaze wander up to a crack in the dark wood of the floor above her head. “I don’t know anything about sports.”

“Right. I forget.” A look of annoyance passed over his face. He looked away from her and started climbing the stairs again.

“What’s your problem?”

He didn’t respond. Just shook his head and didn’t look back.

“Why did y’all even come here anyway?” She knew why they came. They were one of the elite families in town. It was no secret, but she wanted him to know that she didn’t think much of his former elite status.

“My mom’s second cousin owned this place. He was the great-great-great grandson of James Jackson.”

“Was?” She was being catty; she knew it. She knew that whoever his second cousin was had probably been taken out by the first wave of the undead, but she didn’t like the “duh” quality his voice had taken on. As if it was obvious that he be related to the person who owned this mansion.

“Yes, was.” He turned around at the top of the stairs.

“Guess all this fortune didn’t save him when it really counted, huh?” Eve reached the top step and stood next to him.

“Nope, but he almost got the best of you. You’re lucky I didn’t hesitate to shove a dagger into the brain of my own family member.” He turned around and stalked off, the tension in him making sense. So, his relative was the jenk that almost made her his dinner earlier. The anger he’d shown afterward clicked into place. She looked around her at the massive house.

He hadn’t wanted to go home…but he’d wanted to come here. A place where he spent much of his childhood. He’d given her space at the pathetic mess of her home, the least she could do was give him a little privacy here. Eve almost felt bad for him.
Almost.

She didn’t say anything else while they checked out the third floor, many of the rooms were the same as the second floor. Bare, save for some basic necessities. She couldn’t help but wonder where his cousin’s room was. None of these seemed to have had an active tenant in them before the Crave. It all seemed sparse and bare, which was a more disappointing than she wanted to admit.

“Where did your cousin stay? All of those rooms seem like no one lived in them.” Eve hadn’t planned on asking the question. She knew it was rude, but she couldn’t help the disappointment that began to eat at her. The house was beautiful, but it wasn’t filled with all the jewels and items she expected to find.

“Doesn’t really matter, does it?” He hopped over the fleshless bones on the bottom step of stairs and dropped his pack and crossbow. His hands went to the hem of his shirt and jerked it over his head.

“What are you doing?” She paused in her descent, three steps from the bottom. She stared at the glorious planes of his broad shoulders that tapered down into a sinewy waist. She licked her lips.

He looked over his shoulder, his gray eyes twinkling for the first time since they walked into the house. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going for a swim.”

“I can’t believe you’re not going to get in.” Gage backstroked away from the edge of the huge pond. The luke-warm water sluiced against his skin like soft welcoming fingers. Running water was one of the many things he missed. There was nothing like a swim to calm his nerves, especially now. The water seemed to wash away his problems, the tension of being at the place that was like his second home for all of his life. A beautiful mansion now filled with dead rotting corpses. He shook his head and dipped under the water, not letting the memories or reality get the best of him.

“Someone has to collect water,” Eve said when he resurfaced. She was bent over the edge, scooping water with an old plastic Rudy’s cup into a big cast-iron pot she found in the kitchen.

“You’re going to build a fire?”

“Duh.” She didn’t look up. Her gaze focused on the task before her.

“What did you do for water on the road?” He stopped backstroking and kicked his legs and arms around, treading water.

“I drank it when I found it.”

He rolled his eyes. “Obviously, but did you boil it?”

She stopped scooping water and leaned away from the shore in a slow deliberate motion. “Yes, I boiled all of my water. I set up a bonfire every night, especially on the nights that I had hordes following me.”

“Ah, so no boiling for you.”

“Obviously not. I took my chances. Hasn’t played out so bad thus far. But since I’m here and we have time, I’m going to boil this. I did actually boil water whenever I felt safe enough. The fire attracts them like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

She could say that again. If anything brought the gurghs a runnin’, it was the flame of a fire. “I did the same.” He paused. “In Eden you won’t have to worry about water. That’s the job of some people there. They collect it and boil it. Before I left, we were working on getting water running.”

Eve narrowed her eyes. “Why would you ever leave a place like that?”

“I told you, to find my—”

“Your brother. Yes, I know, but I don’t get it. Having a safe place to sleep, and clean water every night just seems like a dream come true.”

“Blood is thicker than water, Eve. You know that.”

The corner of her lips twitched at his joke before she mashed them together and looked away. She ran a hand through her short gold hair, pushing it out of her face. He couldn’t help but notice how there seemed to be different hues of blond, some brighter than others, some darker, almost copper.

“Tonight, we are going to eat good and have clean water.” She still didn’t look at him. Back at it, she was, pouring water into the large pot.

“It’s a sad day when a couple cans of green beans and some beef jerky are called eating good.” He dunked his head under water again, coming back up immediately.

“I used to think stuff like that was sad. Not anymore. It’s the best thing that’s happened to me in weeks and I refuse to see any downside of it.”

“True.” The rippling water rocked against Gage’s skin, feeling like a lullaby, trying to lull him to sleep. The blissful contentment of the feeling almost had him forgetting how pissed he was at Eve for acting like a damned fool and attracting all of those gurghs into the room with them. They both almost died and her at the hands of good ol’ cousin Bill. He hadn’t been too crazy about the older guy, but a part of him had hoped for something. That maybe he had managed to pull through this crazy new world. Hell, if Eve had done it, he figured that Bill could have with all the resources at his fingertips.

Apparently not, though. He hadn’t recognized any of the other gurghs that they’d taken out. His cousin had lived the life of a middle-aged bachelor, so there was no telling.

“You should get in,” he prompted Eve after he’d watched her start a small fire not far from the edge of the pond.

“No thanks. I’m not a risk taker like you are.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Her sea colored eyes squinted when she looked at him. “I don’t like being told what to do, Gage. The ‘shut the hell up’ look you gave me in that room pissed me off.”

Gage tried not to, but couldn’t help it, he smiled. “You are something else, Eve Mercy Wicker.”

A bewildered expression covered her face. “How did you know my middle name?”

“You told me, remember?”

“Yes, but…I didn’t think you would ever remember that.”

“Come on, Eve. Your middle name is Mercy. Like anyone could forget something like that.” The lie slipped easily off his tongue. He’d encountered plenty of other people with strange names in his lifetime and he couldn’t remember them to save his life. He remembered Mercy, because it was hers. Eve’s middle name.

“Right. Of course,” she said with an absent nod. She appeared hurt, but he couldn’t understand why. “I’m not getting in there because I don’t want to find out the hard way.”

Gage frowned. “Find out what the hard way?”

“That there is some sort of jenk that can swim faster than a motorboat.”

He burst into laughter.
Is she serious?

“You think it’s funny, but you know as well as I do that those things can accomplish all kinds of crazy shit that seems impossible.” She crossed her arms over her chest, successfully mashing her boobs. The thick globes pressed against the thin fabric of her sports bra, the tanned flesh of them bursting from the top. The enticing view successfully killed his laughter, and awakened a new feeling that had his cock shooting hard beneath the dark water. “I haven’t come across one of those yet.”

“There’s a first time for everything. Nothing shocks me anymore.” She turned away and walked over to her pack and dug around inside until she pulled out some clothing. He chanced a glance around, making sure there were no gurghs.

He looked back at her. His jaw dropped making him successfully suck in a big gulp of water that had him sputtering.

“You okay back there?” She smirked over her shoulder, but he didn’t even care. She still had her back to him, but stood naked from the waist up, dropping her black sports bra and bending over to snatch another piece of clothing off the ground.

From where he swam he got a perfect view of her sculpted backside in the khaki colored shorts she wore. The angle she bent her body gave him a mere glimpse at the bare flesh of her chest, but she moved too quickly for him to see more.