Stone Heart (The Cursed Seas Collection) by Pauline Creeden & Catherine Banks & Cursed Seas & Charmed Legacy

Author:Pauline Creeden & Catherine Banks & Cursed Seas & Charmed Legacy [Creeden, Pauline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-11-29T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Screeching monkeys woke me the next morning. I sat up, confused and rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Suddenly, Kane’s strong hands grabbed me and tossed me up in the air. I squealed, and my eyes flew open. Hiruko and another monkey caught me pulled me up, and then like a chain, they passed me off from one to the other until I was so high up in the trees, I could not see the ground. My heart raced, dizziness overwhelmed me.

I opened my mouth to call out for Kane, but the monkey next to me, Hiruko’s mate, slapped her paw over my mouth. Her baby clutched his mother’s fur, holding onto her as she sat on a thick tree branch. Adrenaline flowed through me, causing my ears to ring and my heart to race so hard that it ached in my chest. But where was Kane? If there was something dangerous going on, was he safe? More monkeys arrived in the tree tops, and Kane appeared, one tree away, tossed through the branches by a chain of monkeys, just as I had been. Hiruko was right behind him. What in Caracas was going on? Was it a predator?

Hiruko hooted so softly, I almost thought I imagined it, but then another monkey a few branches below us responded with an equally soft hoot. Another responded farther below us, and another. Then, silence.

We sat in the silence, and I clutched the tree, desperately holding my balance so I didn’t fall and give our place away. My ears continued to ring, and my breath came in pants as I tried to get control of myself and calm down. The sense of panic I felt upon waking was unnatural and unnerving. The morning sun bathed us all in soft light from the east, and a breeze licked the sweat from the back of my neck.

Finally, a soft hoot came from below, followed by a few more, until it reached Hiruko, who then relaxed, and hooted at his mate, and then at me.

“Safe?” I asked in a very soft whisper.

He nodded.

My eyes met Kane’s. “What was it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just took their word for it, and once you were being taken care of, started climbing.”

Hiruko waved at us and started swinging through the trees.

I frowned. “Uh, he realizes we can’t do that, right?”

Kane smirked in response.

Why was he smirking?

I got my answer the next moment, when a monkey grabbed me around the waist, and swung on a thick piece of rope after Hiruko. I bit down on the back of my molars to keep from screaming and was glad the monkeys were stronger than they looked. My ears began ringing again. This was all too much. I wanted to close my eyes against it, but instead they widened as we flew among the trees. My stomach flipped, and I worried I would have chucked my breakfast if I’d had a full stomach.

Finally, we came to a stop at the last tree in the forest.

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