Ravenous (The Ravening #1)(5)
Author: Erica Stevens

This time Cade was barely able to keep me up. A small shudder ran through his body as he held me. He took his hand away from my mouth and wrapped his arms around my waist he pulled me away from the window. I didn’t fight against him, there was no fight left within me.

Cade led me hastily through the store. He dodged the shelves, and delicate artifacts, with a graceful ease that even through my strange numbness, I was able to admire. We passed by the counter. A gray haired man stood behind it, a duster was clasped in the hand above his head as he faced the shelves behind the register. His spectacles gleamed in the glow of the lamps dangling from the ceiling above him. I moved toward him to do something, to try and wake him if I could. I had to get him out of here before that awful thing came for him.

Cade’s hand squeezed mine; he shook his head at me as he continued to pull me rapidly forward. I was tempted to fight against him, but I was ashamed to admit that I was too terrified to offer much of a protest. Cade opened a door in the back of the store and pulled me into the darkened stairwell. Closing the door behind us, he pulled the string to turn on a dim bulb. Light filled the narrow, steep stairway, but it didn’t reveal the bottom of the steps.

I glanced up at him, he was a good three inches taller than me at around five eleven. Cade bent close to me, pressing his lips against my ear again. “Stay,” he said so low that I barely heard him over the loud rush of blood filling my ears.

I remained where I was simply because I wasn’t certain I’d be able to walk anyway. A strange, uncontrollable shaking was starting to take hold of my body. My knees were trembling; I couldn’t hold my hands still no matter how much I tried. I wrapped my arms around myself, but it did nothing to ease the chill that had crept into my quaking bones.

Even in this stairwell, away from the street, I could still feel the vibrations the thing caused within the building. I could vividly recall the man struggling against the awful creature greedily pulling the blood from his body.

Another dim light clicked on below. Cade was silhouetted within the shadows as he reappeared at the bottom of the stairs. He moved with unfailing silence back to me. His hand was gentle upon my elbow as he turned the light off and guided me down the steps. I was oddly aware of the fact that though he was silent, I was painfully not.

He led me through the basement, guiding me through the clutter of boxes. I kept expecting to walk through a cobweb but the basement was surprisingly free of spiders and dust. Amongst the boxes were antiques that had already been unpacked, and set out in preparation of the move upstairs. Others had been stored away until their new owners could pick them up, something they would never do now. Cade led me to the back wall. I stood staring at it as he pushed on something that I couldn’t see. I frowned at him, and then at the wall as it began to creek and groan. In my hypersensitive, over stimulated state, I was barely able to keep myself from screaming.

My nose wrinkled as he led me into the small, musty smelling room that had been revealed by the hidden door in the back wall. I was having troubling breathing, I couldn’t see the walls surrounding me, but I could feel their nearness along my skin. I almost turned and bolted from the room, but I somehow managed to keep myself under control. Mainly because Cade’s hand was strong and reassuring on my elbow and I couldn’t humiliate myself in front of him.

He pulled the door most of the way shut before tugging on another string. Light flooded into the room, which was about twelve by twelve feet wide. There were only a few boxes within it, one of which was taller than me and nearly twice as wide. I couldn’t help but speculate about what treasures were hidden within these boxes, and stashed away in this secret room.

“Stay here.”

I whirled as Cade released me. “Wait!” I gasped, lunging for him. I could maybe stay in this room if he was here, but by myself…

By myself I would go crazy.

His grasp on my shoulders was surprisingly tender as he held me back and shook his head at me. “I have to get him. I can’t leave him up there.”

I couldn’t form words to argue with him. He was right, that poor man couldn’t be left up there to be drained dry by that awful, bloodthirsty thing. But I couldn’t be left here either. I despised being trapped within closed confines. It was a phobia that had taken hold of me years ago, and it had never let me go. I didn’t think it ever would.

He was already shaking his head as I spoke again. “I’ll help you.”

“No Bethany. Stay here.”

“Cade…”

“It will be better if I go alone, quicker. Quieter.”

I wanted to protest and tell him that I was just as terrified of this room as I was of that damn thing out there. I didn’t do anything though. He was right, that man required help and I couldn’t bring myself to look like a sniveling coward in front of him. Never in front of Cade.

I didn’t know what it was, but I’d always found myself having to appear less childlike, and more confident around him. But then again, my childhood had been cruelly ripped away from me years ago.

We had lived in this town together almost our entire lives, but we barely knew each other, and yet he gave me a sense of strength I’d never known before. Even when we passed in the hallways, not speaking, not touching, I’d always felt a strange sense of comfort just from knowing that he was there. There had always been a connection to him that I had neither understood nor tried to develop. I considered my feelings for him a silly crush, one that was rearing inappropriately back to life right now. All hell was breaking lose above us, and yet I found myself strangely lost to the magnificent force of his smoldering gaze.

He most certainly didn’t feel anything for me, a dull, clumsy girl that was as far off his radar as Jupiter. Though he was intimidating, and aloof, girls had flocked to him. They’d been drawn in by his alluring good looks and the air of mystery that enshrouded him. However, I’d never seen him with any of those girls, and as far as I knew he wasn’t dating anyone. I didn’t even know if he ever had dated anyone, no matter what the rumors said.

But even with his distant attitude, and seeming disinterest in everything and everyone, I had still found him watching me within the halls, or on the street. Sometimes I would look up and he would be staring at me with an intensity that never failed to make me shake and quiver inside. Staring at me in a way that made me feel he knew me better than anyone else, maybe even knew me better than I knew myself.

I knew his attention didn’t mean anything, that I just yearned for it to, but whenever I found him watching me it always left me rattled and aching for something more. Something that I couldn’t begin to understand, but knew that I craved desperately. Those were the few times I actually did feel like a silly child again, because there was no way that Cade Marshall could ever see anything even remotely interesting, or special, in me.