Obsidian Night Pack

47

"Have you noticed the ground sloping underneath us?" I asked Ash if felt as though we were walking down at a very small slope.

"Is this a math question now? Because I'll just remind you that we both failed that class the first time."

"No, Ash I'm saying that I think the tunnel is leading us further into the hillside." I heard Ash hum at the mention of this.

"That does make sense... by the way when was the last time anyone ever claimed bones that were unmarked?"

"Ummm... I don't know, maybe three generations ago? We don't really touch them. Why do you ask?"

"You don't hear it?"

"Here what Ash!" At that moment Ash and I stumbled down a few steps into a room that looked as if it were caving in. Crumbling from the pressure of the land above and the water leaking in.

"Oh, crap," I muttered, although it was dark in here we could still make out the rock benches that held piles of bones, the dripping of small streams of water coming down from the ceiling, as well as a large hole in the corner of the room, where the rock gave out, and also where a lot of the bones fell into.

"Shit, so the bones, could have been in here, but now they're lost?" I cautiously made my way over to the hole and looked down. It went pretty far, but it also looked as if it just went to the next floor below us.

"We have to go down one more floor."

"Like hell we do! This whole place could collapse on us!"

"Ash come on, there are stairs right over there." I motioned with my thumb to stone steps that had little streams of water flowing over them.

"Clove, you aren't thinking right. The bones could have been here, but now they could literally be anywhere! It was one thing to look for bones in a small room of bones, but now we have to search the whole Goddess damn graveyard! It's not going to happen, at least not tonight. Or not before Alaric and Sander find us and drag us back to the packhouse." I sighed again as I thought about what Ash was saying, she was right about it being difficult and near impossible to find these bones, but there was something in my stomach that was telling me I would find them. Like a warm glow.

"You may be right, but I didn't come all this way just to walk back home with my tail between my legs. Besides Iris said that Alaric and Sander entered her forest, but who's to say how big her forest really is or what side they were on. They could have been hours away from us when we were at her cabin."

"True, but they can actually shift into their wolves right now, while you being you can't and with me being injured from stupid silver, that Sander definitely knows I got hurt by I can't shift either. Unless I want to ruin my injured leg even more. I wouldn't count on them being so far behind us Clover. I think you're forgetting that one of the points of having a mark on your mate is so that you can find them if they are in danger..." My eyes widened with fear at the mention of that little fact Ash had never told me. It's not like I was stupid, okay, maybe I was when it came to marks and mates, but still, the facts never clicked together for me.

"So, you're telling me that you have had a tracking device on you the whole time?!" Ash quickly shook her head.

"No, it doesn't work like that. If it did they would have found us by now and they wouldn't have asked where we were last night. However, if I'm hurt or in danger then Sander can get like a feeling for the area I'm in unless he's distracted."

"Shit, now we really need to hurry! You aren't healing as fast so now this wound just became a tracker for Sander and Alaric." I seethed out as I began to march towards the stairs.