Meg Cabot - Underworld Chapter 2 (rozdział 2).pdf
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And round about I moved my rested eyes,
Uprisen erect, and steadfastly I gazed,
To recognise the place wherein I was.
DANTE ALIGHIERI
,
Inferno
, Canto IV
M
y pulse still pounding from the dream, I opened my eyes.
My hair was stuck damply to my face and neck, my fin-
gers so tightly clenched into fists that it hurt when I tried to
straighten them.
Wait. It
had
been a dream, right?
If so, then why, when I licked my lips, did I taste salt water?
And why did that slant of light filtering through my bedroom
curtains look so unfamiliar?
Because they weren’t my bedroom curtains, I realized. The
curtains in my bedroom weren’t long and white and ghostly.
They didn’t hang from ornately carved stone arches. There wasn’t
a stone arch to be found in the house my mom had bought in a
gated community in Isla Huesos, where we’d just moved from
Connecticut, thanks to my parents’ divorce being finalized and
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my expulsion from the Westport Academy for Girls for decidedly
unladylike behavior.
Nor would Mom’s decorator have chosen medieval-looking
tapestries picturing satyrs chasing half-clad nymphs around as a
design motif.
That’s what lined the wall opposite the stone arches, though, as
well as sconces lit by actual flames. . . .
No way would Mom have okayed those (total fire hazard),
or
the enormous four-poster canopy bed in which I lay.
It wasn’t until a deep, masculine voice said my name — in a
voice so loud, I startled — that I realized I wasn’t in the bed alone.
“Pierce.”
The boy from my dream wasn’t dead at the bottom of the
ocean. He was in the bed next to me. Not only was he in the bed
next to me, but he was holding me in his arms. The reason my
name had sounded so loud was because my head was resting
against his chest.
Which was shirtless.
Mom would
definitely
not have okayed this.
Suddenly, it all came rushing back. Underworld. I was in the
Underworld
.
And this time, I wasn’t dead.
I gasped and sat up. Instantly, his strong arms released me.
“It’s all right,” John said, sitting up as well. His tone was gentle.
So were his hands, going to my shoulders to soothe me. As gen-
tle as if I were the bird I’d once watched him bring back to life.
Except that I knew the enormous power behind those callused
fingers. I’d seen them stop hearts as easily as they’d started one.
8
“Pierce, you were having a nightmare,” he said.
Nightmare? It took me a second to make the connection —
the nightmare from which I’d just woken, about him drowning.
He didn’t mean the one that was unfolding right now before my
disbelieving eyes as I looked down at our legs, entwined on top of
the exquisitely embroidered white comforter.
Because while I wasn’t wearing anything I’d have chosen for
myself — I was dressed in the same kind of long flowing white
gown as the nymphs in the tapestries — at least I was fully clothed.
I couldn’t say the same for him. He had on jeans — though
they were so formfitting, he might as well have been naked. The
black denim molded itself to him like a second skin.
Nightmare . . . or quite excellent dream? I guess it depends on
how you looked at it. His shirt was many feet away, tossed care-
lessly across the low white divan by the fireplace.
His bare chest and shoulders were surprisingly tan for someone
who’d spent most of the past two hundred years trapped below
the surface of the earth, allowed out only for short periods of time
in order to commit felonies, such as kidnapping girls (admittedly,
he’d done this to protect me from being murdered, but it was still
illegal). His skin was the same gold as a lion’s coat, just as warm
and smooth . . .
. . . a fact to which I could attest only too well, as I’d appar-
ently slept with my face pressed against it all night long.
I’d also been weeping against it, if there was any truth to his
next statement.
“You were crying,” he said, smoothing some of my dark hair
from my forehead. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
9
“Not really,” I said, feeling mortified as I remembered all those
times my mother had mentioned my crying in my sleep. I lifted a
wrist to wipe my cheeks. He was right. They were wet.
Crying in my sleep in front of him.
About
him. Great.
I knew I had bigger things to worry about — so big, I didn’t
know how I was ever even going to begin to deal with them —
but I had never spent the night with a boy before. Then again, I’d
never been in love with any boy but him.
I’d been wrong about his skin. When I looked more closely, I
realized it wasn’t entirely gold. There were fine, pale lines criss-
crossing it here and there. What
were
those lines? A closer inspection
was going to be necessary.
“You know you don’t have to worry about her anymore, don’t
you, Pierce?” he asked, his dark brows lowered with concern. “I
know it will take awhile to sink in, but you really are safe here
with me. It was just a dream.”
I wished I could share his confidence. I knew from experience
that though dreams don’t leave scars — at least not ones that any-
one can see — they sometimes leave an ache that can prove every
bit as painful.
And now that I’d gotten a better look at them, I could see that’s
what the pale white lines were that occasionally crisscrossed the
otherwise golden skin of his body: scars from long-healed wounds.
I bit my lip. I knew who’d inflicted those wounds, and why. It
was one of those worries that felt too big for me to deal with right
then. Remembering the monster from which he’d saved me —
more frightening than any ocean swell — by sweeping me from
10
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