Eden's Creatures Read Online Free PDF

Cal felt sweat pop out on his brow and he wanted nothing more than to run.
    “Eat, young ones! Let the flesh of our ancestors fill your heart with resolve and your muscles with power!”
    Ancestors?
    Stassi reached out and took a piece of meat, but Cal hesitated.
    “Do it!” Stassi ordered.
    With shaking fingers, Cal chose a small slice and put it in his mouth. It was the vilest thing he had ever tasted, and he started to gag.
    The chanting started again.
    “Eat it,” Stassi said, kindly this time.
    Determined to see this through, he ignored the metallic taste of blood and chewed the rubbery meat, doing all he could to swallow past the bile tickling at the back of his throat. Somehow, he managed to get it down and instantly wished he hadn’t. A tingling sensation coiled about his limbs. The blood in his veins began to boil, scalding his body from the inside out, setting him afire.
    He threw his head back and screamed in anguish.
    And, then, mercifully, there was nothing but blackness.
    “Cal! Cal! You must wake now!”
    Cal groaned. “Leave me alone.”
    Someone hit him across the side of his head. “Cal! Wake up.”
    Stassi’s voice peeled back the fog from his brain and he groggily came to. Trees loomed overhead in the pitch darkness of the woods. “What happened?”
    “You fainted.”
    Embarrassed, he slowly sat up and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. The ceremony came back to him along with all of the confusion and pain and fear. “Is it over?”
    “It is done.”
    He looked around and recognized his precious clearing a few yards away. He wanted to cry.
    “Can you get to your home from here?” Stassi asked.
    “Yeah.”
    She knelt down next to him. “We did it, Cal! We can start the warrior trials now! Come back to me tomorrow. There is much you need to know now that you are one of us.”
    He nodded, all the while thinking there was no way in hell he would step foot in these woods ever again.

CHAPTER 5
Home Again
    T he idiot’s home,” Ross Taylor announced loudly from his armchair in front of the television.
    Cal swallowed and shut the front door, surprised to see his family still awake. It felt like he had been gone for a lifetime, and he half expected to find that they were the dream after all, and not the Faedin.
    “Hey, Cal, where have you been?” Landon asked, getting up from the floor with a look of concern.
    The sting of tears prickled the back of Cal’s eyelids, but he quickly blinked them away. “Time got away from me, bud,” he said hoarsely and ruffled his brother’s hair. “Come on, let’s get something to eat before bed.”
    They walked into the kitchen together, and Cal noticed his mother standing at the sink. She only glanced at him for a second before turning back to washing the dishes, yet it was enough time for him to see the purple bruise beneath her eye. It matched his.
    “You shouldn’t be out this long, Cal.”
    “Would you rather I stay home and serve as a human punching bag?” he asked, and reached around her into the cupboard for a box of cereal.
    Her shoulders stiffened. “You shouldn’t get involved when he’s been drinking. How many times have I told you that?”
    “Get the bowls,” he told Landon and then leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I was trying to get him off you, Mom. Jesus, I’m not going to stand around and let him hit you.”
    “I can handle him,” she hissed back. “Just stay out of it. I don’t want you hurt.”
    He moved to the refrigerator, pulled out the milk and plopped it down on the table.
    “I don’t want you hurt either. Damn it, why don’t you just leave the bastard?”
    She threw the towel in her hands on the edge of the sink. “And, do what, Cal? Go where? I can’t support us on my own.”
    The expression in her eyes was one he’d seen a thousand times. The look of a beaten soul who couldn’t handle life on her own. Who was always clawing for a strong hand to hold. Even if that hand held a