Chapter 18
Later that night, after the club closed down and Kohl and Devon went back to their temporary home, Everly sat at the empty bar while Hawke locked up and waited for Andrew to count the till, and then walked with him back down into the caverns.
They passed a few other vampires who had been working that night, probably on their way to go feed.
But they didn’t give Everly more than a cursory glance.
Still, staying in the middle of a coven of vampires wasn’t the most stress-free environment. She wished Hawke would stay with her, or let her stay with him, but she knew it wouldn’t happen. He didn’t even have to say anything, his body language said it all.
When they got to her room, Hawke hesitated in the doorway as Everly went in and switched on the bedside lamp. Her hand shook, and she tucked it into the pocket of her sweater though she didn’t know why she bothered. He never missed anything.
She stood there awkwardly, purposefully avoiding his gaze so he couldn’t say goodbye and leave her. But after a minute or so, he crossed the threshold and came to stand before her, and then she had to look at him so as not to be rude.
“Is there anything you need before I go?”
Everly started to shake her head, but then she stopped. “Would you stay for bit? Keep me company?”
He became very still, in the way she was discovering only vampires could. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Please? We can just talk.” She paused. “It’s just that I’m not really tired and I could really use the distraction.”
“Talk.” He made a face when he said the word like it left a bad taste on his tongue.
“Yes. Talk. Please?”
He turned his head away as he said something, and she didn’t quite catch it all. But it looked something like, “I’m not even supposed to be here with you.”
“Hawke?”
His chest rose and fell on a breath. Nodding his head slightly, he walked around her and sat down in the chair beside the bed.
Idly, he picked up the book laying there—a historical about WWII from the looks of it.
Putting it back, he gave her an impersonal smile. “What would you like to talk about?”
Everly kicked off her shoes and climbed up onto the bed. She hadn’t really expected him to stay, and now that she had him here, she had no idea what to say. “Why don’t you tell me about your life. It’s gotta be a lot more interesting than mine.”
“My life.” He scraped his fingertips through his beard. “What would you like to know?”
Everly shrugged. “Everything. When were you born? Where are you from? What’s it like being a vampire?”
He studied her for a few seconds. Then he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. Tonight, he wore a tangerine shirt and black slacks, and with his dark hair and beard, the combination was absolutely yummy. “It’s…” He paused for a long time. “Monotonous.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Monotonous?” It wasn’t the answer she would have expected from someone who had the time and the money to do anything he pleased.
A smile teased the corners of his mouth.
It didn’t reach his eyes. “Yes.” His chest rose and fell on a deep sigh.
“Vampires live the same day over and over and over again. I look the same. I feel the same. My diet never changes.” At this, the smile broadened before it slowly slid away.
“People are born, and people die. Cities rise and fall. The technology improves. The seasons change. But in the end, it’s all the same.
You wake, you feed, you find ways to amuse yourself, you avoid those who would hunt you, you hide from the sun.
And then tomorrow you start all over again. ”
He glanced at her, eyes shifting away again as though he hadn’t meant to say so much, waving away his words as if they meant nothing. But she could see the sadness in his words. “To answer your first question, I’ve lived a long time. Long enough to sound like a grouchy old man.”
She gave him a moment to come back from wherever his head was. “Are you from America?”
“No. I was born a vampire in Europe.”
“What about before that? You were human before you were a vampire, right?”
“No. I was born a vampire. Just as you were born a dragon.”
Everly was stunned. “So, you weren’t turned? You can’t turn someone else?”
Hawke shook his head. “No. But that’s probably a good thing. Many stupid decisions probably would’ve been made before I was old enough to realize the true meaning of having children.”
Fascinated with this up close and personal supernatural history lesson, she asked, “What brought you here to the states?”
“My brother.” He stared down at the floor. “He was my half-brother, actually. We didn’t advertise our relationship.” Something resembling a smile twisted his mouth. “His choice. Not mine. Although I was glad for it in his later years.”
“Why is that?”
“Because he was batshit crazy.” Leaning back in his chair, he shrugged it off.
“We parted ways for a long time. Then word came to me that he was Master of his own misfit coven in a place you would never expect vampires to live. It made a stupid kind of sense, though. Living in the middle of a place early settlers called hell itself, and so I joined him.”
Everly looked around the living quarters she was in. “This place? Your brother—sorry, half brother—was the Master of this coven?”
Hawke nodded. “Yeah.”
“I thought Kohl killed the last Master?”
“He did.”
“And you did nothing about it?”
He looked at her like the thought had never occurred to him. “And what would you expect me to do? Avenge him? He brought it on himself. Kohl challenged him and won. It was a fair fight. The coven has accepted him as their new Master.”
She thought about that for a moment. “Isn’t there some kind of rule of lineage, though? Like royal families? Whoever has the same blood as the previous Master gets the throne?” It made sense, though she had no idea if this was true or not.
His only response was to shrug, which told Everly she’d hit it right on the mark.
“Hawke, if you should be Master of this coven, why not take your rightful place?” And, if he was the one who made the rules, then they could be changed. Like the rule about dragons and vampires not being able to “co-exist”.
But he either didn’t see the possibilities, or he didn’t care enough to fight for a chance with her, for he only said, “I’m not cut out to lead anyone.”
Everly asked him to repeat himself, thinking she couldn’t possibly have understood that correctly.
She may have only known Hawke for a short time, but she’d seen him in action.
He was confident and capable and kind, but strong when he needed to be.
It seemed like a strange thing to say about a vampire, but all night she’d watched from her bar stool as others had come to him about issues, and he’d handled them all with a calm, fair logic she envied.
And modesty wasn’t one of his strong points, so it wasn’t some misplaced sense of humility he was coming from. “What makes you think that?”
“Because I had the honor of that title once. It…didn’t work out well.”
She just couldn’t see it. To her inexperienced eyes, he was the epitome of a leader. “I can’t believe that. Everyone makes mistakes, Hawke—”
“Let it go, Everly.”
But she shook her head. “No, I won’t. As I said, everyone makes mistakes, but that’s no reason to—”
Though his face had the same expression as before, his eyes burned with emotion.
“A mistake that leads your entire coven to their death? A mistake that spares you only because you’re too cowardly to lead them?
A mistake?” He threw his head back, mouth open.
With laughter? With rage? “The only mistake was ever thinking I could be responsible for keeping them safe.”
“I find that hard to believe,” she said, adding on before he could say anything else, “But I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened or how true that may or may not be.”
“No, you weren’t.” He scooted to the edge of the chair, dark eyes intense, mouth twisted in disgust. “My entire coven was trapped and slaughtered within the village where we hunted. The humans were waiting for us with torches. They’d poisoned their blood with a venom so toxic it temporarily weakened us, and then they burned my family alive while they writhed in pain.
” Hawke paused, chest heaving as though he’d just run for miles.
Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his hands clenched into tight fists.
“It may have only been one decision, but it was a decision that wiped out my entire coven.” He looked as though he was about to say more, then with a start, as though just remembering she was there, he sat back. “But no, you weren’t there.”
She wanted to reach out to him, comfort him somehow, but instinct told her her efforts wouldn’t be well received. So, she decided to try a different tactic. “There’s one thing I don’t understand, though.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he cocked his head to the side and waited. His eyes shifted to the door once with an air of impatience.
Scooting to the edge of the bed, she mimicked his pose from before. “If Kohl is the coven Master, and he’s half vampire and half dragon, why hasn’t he tried to change the laws pertaining to the two species?”
“Because Kohl believes his existence is a curse, and he would never wish it upon anyone else.”
Everly scowled. “That’s ridiculous.”
Again with the shrug. “He has a point. Even if we changed the rules for this coven, others wouldn’t understand.
We would be under constant scrutiny. Covens who are our allies now would want nothing to do with us.
Dragon Thunders, either. When threats like Parasupe happened, no one would be watching our backs. ”
“But—”
He slashed his hand through the air. “Stop.”
She pulled back, surprised by his outburst and honestly, a little hurt.
He must have noticed, for he visibly exhaled, allowing the tension to leave his body.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “But there’s no sense in going round and round about this.
I know what you’re doing, and I wish things were different.
I do. Right now, I would love nothing more than to pursue this thing that’s started between us.
To say fuck the laws and pull you onto my lap and show you all of the ways I would love to worship you.
Talk with you about everything and nothing.
Watch you grow into your wings. Tell everyone to fuck off and run away with you. ”
Warmth filled her at the images he created. “But?”
“But we can’t do that, honey. Our kind needs others like ourselves around us, for support and protection. Our people—my coven and your Thunder—are why we’ve survived this long in this world overrun by humans. We wouldn’t make it long on our own.”
“I don’t know about that,” she told him. “I’ve survived just fine on my own up until now.”
“I can tell by your desperate need to find your brother.”
He smirked, and she scowled. “That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not. But it proves my point. Your instincts led you to search for him. They know you need to be around others of your kind.”
She leaned toward him again. “I need to be around you.” There. The truth was out. Her cheeks burned, but she wouldn’t take them back or look away and pretend she’d never said it. “I don’t know about instincts, but something keeps telling me I need you, Hawke.”
Gently, he brushed her hair back from her face. “It’s getting late. You should get some sleep.”
She didn’t want to sleep. She wanted him to finish what he’d started earlier. But she knew he wouldn’t. Just like she knew pressing him any more on this subject would only deepen the divide forming between them. “Would you stay just a little longer?”
“Only if you promise to try to sleep.”
With a grin and a “be right back,” she jumped up from the bed and went into the bathroom to put her pajamas on and brush her teeth. When she came out, he’d turned down the lamp and made himself comfortable in the chair.
After Everly climbed into bed, he asked her to tell him more about her childhood.
She did, glossing over the unpleasant parts of being in foster care and focusing on the good years.
She told him everything she could remember, none of which was any use in discovering who her real parents were.
And eventually, she fell asleep with tears in her eyes and the back of her knuckles against the warmth of his leg.
When she woke up, he was gone, and a ripe peach lay on the nightstand beside the book.
Everly picked it up, inhaling the unique scent before she took a bite of the sweet fruit.
Then she got up and went to the bathroom to shower and dress.
She needed to go up to the office and check on her brother.
Hopefully everyone else was already awake and decided on a plan to get him out of there.
Or at least Devon. If she was there, perhaps she could talk to her and convince her to help her talk the guys into giving him a chance before they went all jury and executioner on him.
Her heart ached as she thought of the only other alternative.
Because if they wouldn’t agree to it, then she knew what she would have to do.