Free Adam, Devils on Horseback: Generations, Book 1 by Beth Williamson Page B

that elicited the humor.
    Eve hadn’t heard him laugh before. She’d married him and he’d never once laughed with her.
    Sadness again settled over her heart at the thought. Adam knew what he was doing when he proposed, especially considering the marriage today was his idea. She shouldn’t be feeling low because they were strangers. There was no artifice to their relationship, which was new to her.
    They would get along well enough for a time. Eve would know when that time was over and she would move on. Adam would be grateful when that happened, she was sure of it. People weren’t meant to stay their whole lives together. Circumstances and emotions got in the way of happiness, and who wanted to live like that?
    A few folks headed for the door and the thought of a wedding night flitted through Eve’s mind. She certainly knew what happened between a man and a woman. She had guarded her body and the value it held. She had protected herself for the last five years, another reason she carried a knife on her thigh.
    Curiosity and excitement pushed aside any fear she might have. Sex between a husband and wife was older than time. There was no shame to be excited about it. Eve wanted to enjoy her wedding night with her new husband. Maybe she would.
    A sound rose in the distance, one she didn’t recognize. It grew in volume until everyone in the house stopped to listen. It sounded like an animal in pain. No, not in pain, in agony .
    Mrs. Sheridan dropped her mug of coffee, the brown liquid splashing up in an arc on her yellow dress. She ran for the door, followed by Adam and his uncles. Eve remembered Mr. Sheridan had left earlier and hadn’t returned.
    Dread and fear tightened around her heart as she followed everyone out the door and toward the mill. A woman’s scream split the air. Eve ran as fast as she could, only to run into a crowd of big men packed into the mill.
    “Jake! Oh my God, Jake.” Mrs. Sheridan’s voice echoed through the building.
    The smell of blood hit Eve first.
    She moved faster, pushing people out of her way. By the time she reached the center, a full minute had passed, but it felt more like an hour.
    “Shut down the water, Rose!” Adam shouted with something like desperation in his tone. The veins stood out on his neck and arms as he pressed a large rock between the two massive grinding wheels to halt them. His uncle Zeke stood behind him, back to back, giving him his weight and strength.
    Mrs. Sheridan knelt by her prone husband. Jake’s hair and his shoulder were caught between the two enormous stone wheels. A scarlet river of blood puddled around him from the entire upper half of his body.
    The wheels were sandwiched within a circular wooden structure that was partially open. A hopper and another piece of wood lay on the floor beside him. It looked as if he’d been cleaning or doing something to the stone wheels and his shirt was pulled in between them.
    Eve wasn’t someone people would expect to have training for medical things, but she did. In one of her former selves, right before she met the Roma, she had lived and worked at a hospital, assisting the triage nurses.
    She might not be the most ideal wife for Adam, but she was going to do her best to save his father’s life.

Chapter Six
    Adam had never known what panic felt like until now. Seeing his father trapped between the grinding wheels made him want to vomit, scream, run and howl at the heavens, all at once.
    The hopper was disconnected and the tun was unlatched and open, which meant Pa wasn’t actually grinding anything. The protective wooden piece not only channeled the ground wheat, but it kept the wheels a safe distance away from hands and injury. When the mill was running, they were dangerous to touch and hot from the grinding. For some reason Pa must’ve been in here alone, checking the stones, and unlatched the tun, exposing the dangerous spinning wheels.
    Adam managed to stop the stones temporarily, but unless the