Chapter 12
Everly followed Hawke into The Caves. She felt incredibly underdressed in her pajama pants and sweater, but she hadn’t thought to put on anything else. She hadn’t thought about anything at all the entire way over here. Her mind was completely blank. A self-defense mechanism, perhaps.
Hawke walked around the dance floor, completely ignoring the half-clad women trying desperately to catch his eye and carried her two suitcases into the office. “Stay here,” he told her. “Let me go find Kohl and tell him what’s going on.”
She nodded and sank gratefully into the closest leather chair. Her eyes closed as soon as she laid her head back. She sat there for a few minutes, her body strangely calm. But her mind was buzzing away with everything Hawke had told her back at her apartment.
Could it be true?
But how?
Her eyes popped open. Suddenly restless, Everly got up and walked behind the desk.
She opened one of the drawers. It was empty.
As were all of the others. Where did they keep their paperwork for the club?
The schedules. Anything she could snoop through to get evidence for her story, and to keep her mind off of the terrifying fact that she had some creature lurking inside of her that might burst out any day now.
Any moment.
She trailed her fingers along the desktop as she returned to the chairs.
The wood vibrated with the beat of the music playing out in the club.
She remembered this one. It was a good song.
Contrary to many beliefs, she could “hear” the beat and loved to dance.
However, right now dancing was the last thing on her mind. She was too freaked out.
All she could think about were the werewolf movies she’d seen. The way the beast inside of them broke a person’s bones and tore through their skin. The way their teeth fell out and regrew and they screamed in pain as their jaw elongated and their legs broke and bent the wrong way.
She froze halfway around the desk and wrapped her arms around herself, pulling her sweater tight, losing the song.
The dragon she’d seen was big. Huge, even.
And they breathed fire. How the hell was it possible she would turn into one of those things?
The blood rushed to her head and she had to sit down.
Her heart beat double-time and her skin felt hot and clammy, and she put her head between her legs as panicked tears blurred her vision.
Everly wasn’t good with pain. She didn’t even have any tattoos.
Her ears had been pierced when she was really young, and she still remembered it vividly every time she changed out her earrings.
She’d never broken a bone or had so much as a sprained ankle.
Once, she’d accidentally slammed her hand in the oven door while checking on the casserole she was cooking, and she’d sat on the floor and cried for thirty minutes.
But she hadn’t felt the burn.
Slowly, she sat up and stared down at her right hand.
She hadn’t opened the door all the way and it had closed on its own as she was pulling her hand out.
The heavy thing had slammed shut hard, trapping her hand.
She’d been so shocked it had taken her a few seconds to react and open the door again.
Her hand had been burned front and back, the skin red and blistered.
The oven was old and cranky, and the crush on the fragile bones had hurt like a son of a bitch.
But she didn’t take much notice of the burns until the next day when Tyson had asked her what happened.
Her heart picked up again and she took deep breaths. That didn’t mean anything. She’d probably damaged the nerve endings or something and that was why she hadn’t noticed the burns.
Then why were there no scars?
The door opened and Hawke came in, followed closely by Kohl and Devon, as tall and pretty as ever. They filed inside, shutting the door behind them, and came to stand in a circle around the area where she was sitting.
Feeling much like a science project on display, Everly reached under her hair to discreetly adjust her hearing aids as she stood.
It didn’t help much, not the standing or the adjusting of her aids.
She was still the shortest one there, and she still couldn’t hear shit.
She didn’t know why she even wore the stupid things.
They didn’t work, other than to separate voices from the other sounds around her.
Individual words were impossible to understand.
A person speaking to her was just…a sound. There was no tone or pitch to it.
Hawke touched her arm, gaining her attention. She watched his mouth as he spoke, lip reading, and wished she could hear his voice.
“Do you remember Kohl? And you know Devon.”
Everly nodded and smiled nervously at Kohl, remembering what Hawke had said about him.
She looked him up and down, searching for some sign that it was true, but she didn’t see anything except kind brown eyes and muscular arms covered in tattoos beneath his tight blue T-shirt.
More tattoos covered his neck, and even the hand he held out for her to shake.
She took it and found him smiling warmly at her.
“Hi, Everly.”
“Hi.”
Then she was engulfed in a cloud of curly black hair as Devon leaned in and gave her a big hug before releasing her. She kept her hands on Everly’s shoulders. “Hawke filled us in. Are you doing okay?”
Everly tried to smile at her, but it felt tight and fake. “I’m good.”
“No, you’re not.”
She sniffed and shook her head. “No, I’m not.”
Devon hugged her again for long moments before she finally stepped back.
But Everly hung on to Devon like she was the only solid thing in the room and a tornado was about to hit. “This isn’t real, right?” she asked her. “This isn’t true, what he says about me. It’s not possible.”
Hawke must’ve said something, because Devon looked up over Everly’s shoulder for a brief moment. She nodded and turned her attention back to Everly. “It’s all true. I’ve seen it,” She glanced at the male next to her. “With Kohl. Hell, I’ve been carried by it.”
Everly blinked, thinking she couldn’t have understood that correctly.
Devon gave her shoulders a squeeze and dropped her arms back down to her sides, leaving Everly cold and alone. She glanced back at Hawke, wishing he would hold her.
But he just gave her an impersonal smile. “You and Kohl need to spend some time together. He can tell you what to expect.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“Because I’m not a shifter, Everly.”
Someone touched her upper arm and she turned to find Kohl trying to get her attention.
“I’m actually still learning about all this myself,” he told her.
“But I’m more than happy to do what I can to help you.
” He pulled a cell phone out of his back pocket and checked the time.
“The club will be closing soon. Why don’t you take her down to the caverns,” he told Hawke.
“And we’ll come down after I make sure everything is locked up. ”
Hawke must have responded, for Kohl took Devon’s hand. But before he left, he told Everly, “We have a lot to talk about, all of us. But feel free to get some sleep if you want. We can talk tomorrow.”
“I’m not tired,” she said, though she could barely stand without swaying on her feet. “I’ll wait for you.”
“Okay.” Kohl said something to Hawke she didn’t quite catch and pulled Devon toward the door.
“It’ll be okay,” she told Everly as she passed.
When they were gone, she stood staring at the closed door. The air suddenly felt thick and hard to breathe. She could feel Hawke staring at her hard, the weight of it between her shoulder blades nearly bowling her over.
After a few seconds, he appeared in her peripheral vision, walking to the door with her suitcases. His expression was unreadable. With a cock of his head, he indicated for her to come with him.
Everly followed him back out into the club.
The dance floor was still packed with too many bodies, and there wasn’t an empty table to be found.
As they passed close to a group of three on their way around the bar, a young blond man lifted another man’s wrist to his mouth.
The lights flashed and Everly saw a glimpse of fangs for a brief instant before he bit the guy’s arm. His eyes closed as he drank.
Vampires. She’d nearly forgotten she’d be surrounded by them here.
Hawke took her down to the end of another hallway. At the door, he set down one of her suitcases and laid his palm flat on the reader before opening it.
Everly reached out to take it, but he just shook his head at her and picked it back up, then put his back to the door and held it open for her.
As she passed, she tried to catch his eyes, but he kept his head stubbornly down.
She found herself on a platform at the top of a metal ramp.
It led underground into a dimly lit tunnel of smooth, tan limestone.
Her spirit dimmed at the thought of being constantly surrounded by all of this bland stone.
But once she reached the bottom, she saw it was much more.
“Oh, my God. It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
What she previously thought a narrow tunnel actually opened up into a path alongside a small cavern.
Stalactites of ancient molten stone hung from the ceiling in long formations.
Stalagmites rose from the floor in tall, pointed castles made of dripping particles.
The humidity was so thick, a glaze of water shimmered on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling, glittering in the light like tiny golden diamonds.
Everly walked closer and gasped with delight. It wasn’t only water that made the walls sparkle. The stone had actual tiny flecks of gold in it. The entire place was like standing in a castle made of gold, albeit a very rustic castle, but a castle nonetheless.
Unable to help herself, Everly spun around to share her delight with Hawke, smiling so big it hurt her face as she gestured to the magic around them.
But he wasn’t looking at the gold in the walls or the impressive columns that seemed to hang mystically in the air. He was looking at her, his body so still he looked to be a part of the stone surrounding them. A predator about to pounce.
Everly caught her breath and her heart began to pound.
For a moment, she thought he was about to drop her bags and take her right there on the floor.
But then he closed his hungry eyes and visibly inhaled and exhaled.
When he opened them again, the embers were still there, but the fire was controlled.
“This way,” he said. Then he walked as far around her as he could on the narrow path, careful not to brush against her.
Everly followed him, noticing how he didn’t look around to appreciate the beauty of the underground cavern. Instead, he kept his eyes directly on the path in front of him and never wavered that she could see.
By the time he veered off through a separate smaller cavern, it felt as if they’d walked a good half-mile through rooms of various sizes and beauty.
Up ahead, she caught a brief glimpse of a cavern that was…
well, cavernous, and easily as big as a football field, with a throne-like structure in the center of a clearing in the middle of the room, surrounded by a field of stalagmites standing straight at attention.
Looking up, she saw a part of the ceiling had been replaced with some type of metal trap door.
It was large. Large enough for a dragon to fly through.
She stumbled over the uneven surface, and quickly dropped her eyes when Hawke turned back to check on her so he wouldn’t see the shock on her face. Because no matter how many times she’d been told it was true, it still just didn’t seem possible.
He veered off again down another tunnel, this one so narrow Hawke had to turn sideways a few times to get his broad shoulders through.
A few minutes later, and they stopped before a large metal door.
Inside was a walled-in room with a bed, a large dresser with a mirror above it, and a comfy looking chair.
A book lay open on the nightstand beside it.
Hawke set down her suitcases and finally looked at her. The room smelled familiar, but not like him. And she suddenly realized…this wasn’t his room.