Chapter 17
“Son of a bitch. Shit. Shit!”
Kohl walked into Hawke’s room after his shift at the bar, just in time to see the vampire shove his chair away from the computer monitor on his small desk, sending it crashing into the wall. The rest of the room was sparse, with only a bed and a single chair Hawke liked to read in.
“What’s wrong?”
Hawke stood. “Your little girlfriend, that’s what’s fucking wrong.”
“What are you talking about?” He quelled the urge to whip out the new cell phone he’d gotten from the stash in his room and call her. Belatedly, he remembered he was supposed to text her after he got back and let her know he was okay. Shit.
“I’m talking about this.” Hawke pointed at the computer monitor.
The screen showed four different pictures, feeds from the security cameras that were rigged in the trees around the club. All four showed teams of Parasupe “prosecutors,” fully decked out in combat gear and weapons, sneaking around the perimeter of the club.
It was a raid.
“Fuck.” Kohl couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“We gotta get the hell out of here,” Hawke said, grabbing his coat off the chair by the bed. “More will be coming.”
Kohl pointed at the screen. “This isn’t Devon, man. She wouldn’t do this.”
“Are you sure about that?” Without waiting for an answer, Hawke disappeared to warn the others.
Alarms sounded, echoing within the caverns, and the computer screen went black.
“She wouldn’t do this,” Kohl whispered.
But no one was around to hear.
Three hours later, he knocked on her apartment door. She opened it so fast he wondered if she’d been waiting for him. But that didn’t make sense. Why would she still be up this late?
Unless…
Her eyes ran over him from head to toe. “What the hell happened? Why didn’t you text me?”
He had the funniest feeling she knew exactly what had gone down at the club, and why he was standing at her door in the middle of the night in clothes that were torn from running through the brush and covered in blood, yet the look of innocence on her face could have won her an academy award.
Not his blood. If he’d been hit by any of the bullets those Parasupe fuckers used, he wouldn’t be standing here. “May I come in?”
She stepped back out of the way. “Of course.”
Her friend—what was the guy’s name?—Frank. Yeah, that was it. Frank was spread out on her sofa in nothing but a pair of red lounge pants eating popcorn and watching some reality show on her television.
“Frank, this is Kohl. Kohl…Frank.”
Frank froze, a handful of popcorn halfway to his mouth. He dropped it back in the bowl and whispered loudly to Devon, “You have been holding out on me.”
If Kohl didn’t know for a fact that the guy was way more turned on by him than her, he would’ve been more concerned about his chosen attire. “Hey, man. Would you give us a minute, please?”
Frank gave him another once over, lingering on the blood staining his white shirt this time. To his credit, Frank took Kohl’s appearance in stride. “Hard night at the office?”
“Something like that.”
Swinging his legs off the couch, Frank stood and planted a kiss on Devon’s cheek. “Yell if you need anything, my love.” Giving her a look Kohl couldn’t decipher, he set the popcorn bowl on the kitchen counter and let himself out.
“What happened?” she asked as the door closed behind him. “Why didn’t you text me?”
Kohl walked over to the window and stared out at the city of Austin, lit up under the clear night sky. For once, he was having a difficult time looking at her. He wished he could pull the answer to his question out of her head. “Dev, what did you do?”
The silence stretched on, and he realized he didn’t need to be able to read her mind. The fact that she didn’t immediately answer told him everything he needed to know.
“Kohl, please tell me what happened. Are you all right?”
“Why did you do it, Dev? Why did you lie to me?”
“I didn’t lie to you about anything.”
Her emotions were strangely calm for a woman who was in danger of having her life ended any moment.
He wanted to turn around. He wanted to turn around and take her in his arms and carry her into that tiny bedroom and fuck the truth out of her.
“You don’t seem surprised that I showed up at your door in the middle of the night with blood all over my clothes.
” Needing to see her face, if for no other reason than to torture himself in the long, lonely nights to come, he turned around.
Devon was standing a few feet behind him, hands twisted in front of her.
Her hair was covered in some kind of colorful cloth, accentuating her oval face, not one drop of makeup covering her smooth, tawny skin.
She was wearing a loose T-shirt and flannel pajama pants.
Her feet were bare. She was beautiful. So beautiful it made his mouth go dry and his dick hard, even now.
He inhaled to get his bearings, and her scent flooded his senses.
The thirst hit him hard. His fangs descended in anticipation of tasting her sweet blood, but he clamped his jaw together, denying them both.
She dropped her chin, looking down at the floor. When she again looked up at him, there were tears in her eyes. “Are you all right? Please tell me.”
He didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t believe it. Not until this very moment. “You sent Parasupe after me?” He had a hard time getting the words out.
Confusion crossed her features and she shook her head. “No! Kohl, please. Tell me what happened!”
But she didn’t fool him. Not any longer. Hawke had been right. “You sent them. You sent them.”
Again, she shook her head. “I didn’t send anybody. I just—” She winced and touched her temple with one hand, then took a step toward him. “Dammit, Kohl! You were supposed to text me.”
Linking his hands behind his neck, he stared up at the ceiling.
The dragon was unusually quiet. Surprising, considering the rollercoaster of emotions free falling around inside his gut so hard it made him want to throw up.
Kohl was both glad and sorry about its timing.
Glad because even after knowing what he did, he couldn’t bring himself to want to hurt her.
Sorry because for the first time in his fucked up life, at this moment, he would welcome the oblivion of shifting.
“Kohl, please. Listen to me.”
Dropping his arms back down to his sides, he bared his fangs at her in warning. “I don’t think so, Devon.”
Her eyes flared their own warning. “Kohl.”
Deliberately, he walked around her, heading toward the door.
“Kohl! Where are you going?”
He paused at the door, but didn’t turn around.
“You need to leave, Devon. Pack your bags and get the hell out of this city. Out of this state. Tonight. Right now. The coven knows it was you. I can’t protect you anymore.
Not right now. Get the hell out of here until I figure out what to do.
” He let himself out, closing the door gently behind him.
A familiar scent wafted past his nose, but it was there and gone so fast he didn’t have time to place it.
When he got back out to his bike, he realized something that he’d been too distracted to notice before.
Her blood call was weaker than before. As a matter of fact, he could barely feel her at all.
Kohl felt no relief that their bond was nearly severed. He only felt alone. Perhaps it had never really been there to begin with. An ugly laugh rose up from his gut and burst from his lips.
He started the engine and lifted the bike off its kickstand.
Devon came running out of the building. Either it took her a minute to follow him or he hadn’t realized how fast he’d wanted to get out of there. She stopped when she saw him across the lot, tears running silently down her cheeks.
Kohl saw a crossroads before him. One road led back to the only family he’d ever known, the ones who had taken him in and protected him when he and his mom had nothing and no one.
The other road led him to the woman standing shivering in the cold, tears running down her face, who, despite everything she’d done, was still so full of light it warmed him down to his soul and made the dragon purr with pleasure.
But the light wasn’t enough to pierce the darkness of her betrayal.
Shifting the bike into first gear, Kohl rode away from her and headed back to help the others get rid of the evidence of the raid.
The dragon spread its wings and screeched in protest. Kohl bared his fangs back at it and hissed into the wind.
Four vampires had died. Four young, innocent vampires who hadn’t done anything to anyone.
They’d died because they’d tried to run instead of taking shelter down in the safety of the caverns while the elders took out the Parasupe team.
It hadn’t been hard. The humans in the club never even knew anything unusual had happened other than the fact the vampire working the door who wouldn’t let anyone leave until he got the okay from Hawke or the Master—a simple enough task of planting the suggestion in their customer’s minds that they weren’t ready to go home yet.
They’d been lucky this time, but he knew from what had happened to other covens that they wouldn’t get away so easily next time.
And there would be a next time, thanks to Devon.
Now that Parasupe knew where they were, they’d be back.
Especially after the first team didn’t come home.
Fuck, the entire coven might as well be walking around with giant targets on their backs. Himself, included.
Laying low on his bike, Kohl kicked it into high gear.
Halfway back to the caverns, he came up to the intersection that would lead him to the restaurant where he’d taken Devon.
At the last minute, he leaned into a sharp right turn.
The back tire spun beneath him on some loose gravel, but he leveled things out and sped west. He needed to warn Margaret and her family.
If the coven turned on Kohl after hearing what happened the night before, it could very well spill over onto the family.
They all knew how close Kohl was with them, and with a vampire’s vindictiveness, would go after anyone he cared about just to hurt him.
The image of Devon crying in the cold flickered within the glow of his headlights. With a snarl, Kohl shook his head and the image dispersed. He’d thought he could trust her. He’d been horribly wrong.
He could only hope she’d heed his warning and get the hell out of Austin, because despite what she’d done, he had no wish to see her dead.