Unbearable Read Online Free Page A

the crag, a few hundred feet above the land below. She lowered the backpack she had been carrying to the ground and pulled out a nylon rope, bright orange in color, and unwound it. “We have to scale past the Main Wall and around to the south past the buttresses to reach the cave mouth,” she explained. “I hope yer all good with heights.”
    She clipped pitons and carabiners to her belt and they jingled softly. Then she looked up and laughed at us. “Oh, this is just because yer all strangers to the crags here. I won’t be having ye falling to ye fate on my watch.” Then she glanced up at the sky, measuring the time. “Come, now. Hurry, but slow hurry, ye hear?”
    The next few hours passed as we edged our way around the buttresses, heading south. We weren’t climbing. However, the rock wall was sheer and the ground below stony and unforgiving, forcing us to inch along. Mairead tied us all together and strung out pitons as we went.
    I was very glad to be a vampire right then. Perfect and instant healing meant that the strain to my sinews and muscles never became overwhelming. Lactic acid didn’t build up in my muscles, making them stiff and unresponsive. I didn’t get tired.
    I kept a sharp eye on Tally as she moved silently between Nick and me. I noticed that Nick was looking back over his shoulder more frequently as time passed. He was monitoring her as well. Tally was silent, as she often was these days. She also gave no sign of stress or strain. She kept doggedly on.
    “The cave mouth is all but inaccessible unless you happen to fly…or glide,” Mairead explained as she crept along a shelf barely a foot wide. “I know the way because I used to play here as a child. There’s nothing to climb around to the south where the cave starts, so the rock climbers don’t go there.”
    It was a bleak spot. The cave mouth was a narrow fissure that we passed through one at a time and that made my heart sink. “Lirgon would not fit through here,” I pointed out.
    Nick nodded, looking troubled.
    “We’re here now. We check it out and eliminate the possibility,” Tally said shortly. She turned on her flashlight and looked around the bigger cavern that had opened up just inside.
    Candy wrappers and empty soda cans littered the floor, which farther reduced my hope. “Surely, the teenagers and kids who come here would have noticed if gargoyles had moved in.”
    Mairead nodded toward the crevasse at the back of the cavern, barely seen in the light from our flashlights. “This cave system runs for miles through the crags and down deep, too. Craigencallie was a natural fortress in Roman times, that the tribes used to hide from the legions who ventured north of the wall.”
    “Hadrian’s Wall,” Nick murmured, frowning. He had his sword out and was studying the fissure ahead of us. If he thought it a good idea to draw, then I would follow his lead. He was sometimes almost prophetic with his hunches.
    Mairead moved around us and took the lead, as Tally and I both drew our swords. She led us deeper and deeper into the crag, moving with confidence even when the path clearly split and ran in different directions. The floor of the caves was generally even, worn smooth by thousands of feet over the centuries. Even though there was no one but us in the caves at that moment, the smooth footing spoke of other humans and made me doubt all over again. Gargoyles would not choose such a well-trafficked cave to hide in. The more isolated and difficult to reach caves were their preferred nests.
    We moved on, the echoes of our passage reverberating in the cold air around us. Otherwise, it was utterly silent and very dark beyond the beams of our flashlights.
    The way grew rockier and less friendly to human feet, telling me that we were reaching the more distant areas. Mairead lifted her flashlight and let the beam play on the smooth granite section of the wall we were passing. Ancient figures had been painted there, showing stylized