by Lola Gabriel
He’d forgotten that Elsa was watching his every move.
9
This is all a bad dream. You’re going to wake up, institutionalized in some psych ward, pumped full of medication and—
“Get back. The portal’s opening,” Reef whispered, and Penny automatically obeyed, waiting to see who emerged. Or what.
They’d been standing in the shadows for over an hour, watching beings come and go until Penny was certain her mind was going to explode. These creatures don’t exist. I’ve read too many books, seen too many sci-fi movies… And yet she’d seen Lycans, vampires, and pixies walk past where she and Reef sat, intermingling as if living in supernatural sin was commonplace somehow.
Penny was both petrified and awed as she noticed two more Brownies wander through, chattering about their day at work.
“—and I told Stephen that if he didn’t give me a raise, the Hilton has been eyeing me, too. Well! You should have heard how huffy he got!”
Penny gaped after them.
“They… you… just walk among us, and no one is the wiser?” she muttered. “You work the same jobs as us and then come back here at night?”
Reef shrugged almost nonchalantly. “Many of us live on the Sunside.” He caught her look of confusion. “That’s what we call your side of the world.” Penny wondered if her head was going to explode. “But yes, most of us live in the Hollows. We go to work and come home, just like you do.”
Stop asking so many questions, Penny thought. You can’t possibly absorb everything in one sitting. This is information overload. She decided instead to switch the topics.
“She’s not coming,” Penny murmured. “And no one has mentioned anything about the bodies in the portal. Did she come earlier than us and see them?” She could see that Reef had considered the same thing, but he didn’t speak. “There’s no point in staying here if she did,” she reminded him. “It’s dangerous being exposed, isn’t it?”
“We’ll give her a little more time,” Reef insisted. Penny noticed that his eyes again darted up toward the top of the Hollows, which she considered as the sky, even though it wasn’t; not really.
“What do you keep looking at?” she demanded, wiping her palms on the outside of her tracksuit. She could feel the strands of her hair falling out of her short ponytail around her face. Every once in a while, she’d catch Reef’s stare with her own, and instantaneously, her face would explode into a deep red flush, which Penny knew was both inappropriate and bizarre. He wasn’t even human. How could she be attracted to someone like him?
And yet she was, undeniably.
Penny chalked it up to her fragile state of mind. So much had gone wrong in the past weeks—her whole life had unraveled. She wondered if she was just looking for love in all the wrong places.
Love? She scoffed to herself. You really are out of your mind. You’ll be lucky if you survive this. There is no love with a dragon shifter beast. You will go home, sell all your earthly possessions, and join a convent. If you get out of here alive.
Penny realized that Reef still hadn’t answered her question, and she peered at him expectantly. “Why do you keep looking up?”
On cue, his blue eyes moved in the direction he’d been looking all along, and this time, Penny did the same. Her eyes narrowed.
“Is that a camera?” she choked. “Is someone watching us?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Reef told her gruffly. It was hardly a comforting answer.
“What do you mean, ‘don’t worry about it’?” Penny demanded. “You’re the one who said that if I’m caught here, I’m as good as dead! And now you’re telling me that there are cameras?”
“Penny, you need to stop panicking and start focussing on what we can do to get you out of here. It’s obvious that Violet, whoever she is, isn’t coming back.” Penny could only look at him, nonplussed. “What?” Reef demanded.
“Why are you helping me? You sent the others to die without a second thought.”
Reef glared at her, his blue eyes flashing. “I already explained to you that I had no idea they would—” He stopped talking, his mouth becoming a firm line. “You’re just picking a fight with me.”
“I’m scared to death!” Penny yelled. “I’m not picking a fight!” She wished she could recant her words, not wanting to expose her vulnerability to this creature, but he was the closest thing to a friend she had at that moment.
Reef’s face softened. “I know you’re scared,” he said gently. “And I’m trying to get you out of here, but frankly, all we can do now is find a place to hide you until we can figure out whatever was in that serum.”
Penny didn’t want to spend one more second in the strange underworld in which she had found herself, but what other options did she have?
“Come on.” Reef grabbed her hand, and an unexpected jolt of electricity shot through Penny. Once again, she questioned her own sanity, though she had a feeling she already knew that any reason she’d been clinging to had gone out the window. She allowed herself to be moved along the shadows, keeping her head down as Reef had instructed her earlier, lest she attract attention to herself.
“Can’t the others… sense me or something?” she murmured.
“If they see you, they will know you don’t belong here,” Reef assured her. “That’s why I have to take you back to the Trenches. I think we still have an apartment there.”
“We?”
Reef cast her a sidelong look, and a half-smile touched his lips. “Me and my brothers.”
“You have brothers?” Instantly, an image of Cate filled Penny’s mind.
“I have four.” The wry smile remained on his lips, as if he was privy to a joke that Penny was not.
“Must be nice to have brothers you share things with,” she muttered, a slight bitterness touching her voice. To her surprise, Reef snickered.
“Yeah, it’s not that simple,” he replied. “But that’s not really important.”
“You don’t trust your brothers?”
“Not all of them, not entirely, and not all the time,” Reef answered, almost as if it was his automated response to that question.
“Then how do you know the apartment is safe?”
“Because none of my brothers will step foot in the Trenches anymore. It’s been eons since we’ve had any business there.”
Penny eyed him through her peripheral vision as they moved. He means it. Literal eons.
More shivers pulsated through her body, but she shut her mouth and concentrated on making her way unseen. She had no real sense of time in the Hollows, the light a perpetual pale grey, and it made her wonder where they got any light at all. The world seemed self-contained, but Penny still couldn’t understand where it was, how it had been a functioning, running realm right under her nose for as long as she’d been alive.
“This way,” Reef told her, dipping down another alleyway, and Penny slipped in behind him. It was hard to keep her eyes down instead of on the marvel that defied everything she thought she knew about the world in which she had been raised.
The area where Reef had taken her was reminiscent of a medieval European town, except with a post-modern, box-condo touch. Apartments loomed up as high as Penny could see, all in a crumbling state of disarray, and the storefronts were illuminated in neon signs. She felt like she’d stepped into a B-movie space station—or an alternate dimension.
Maybe this is an alternate dimension, she thought suddenly. She didn’t put her idea to words, though. She would bombard Reef with questions after she was certain that she wasn’t about to be set on fire by a dragon’s breath or bitten by a vampire. Again, things I never thought I would have to worry about in my lifetime.
Reef found a backdoor to one of the dilapidated buildings, and they stopped. A group of fully-shifted Lycans sat in the stairwell. Apprehension shot through Penny like a blast, and she stepped back, but Reef held onto her. She watched as their collective leers turned into expressions of stoicism when their gazes moved to
ward Reef.
“Oh,” one of them mumbled. “It’s the po-po.”
“Move,” Reef snapped, and they instantly obliged, clearing a spot on the stairs. As he urged her forward, Penny heard their whispers.
“The prince got himself a mortal. Must be nice to do whatever you want.”
“How the hell did he get her down here?”
“He’s the prince. Who knows what they can do?”
Penny’s head whipped toward Reef, but if he heard them, he didn’t make any comment, and the two continued to climb. She counted fifteen floors before losing count, her exhausted body simply falling into steps with Reef. Finally, her legs stopped moving, and Reef paused to look back at her.
“You can’t stop now,” he urged. “You need to keep coming. Just a few more floors.”
But Penny was done, her slender frame depleted of all energy, and she shook her head.
“I can’t,” she told him. There wasn’t a whine in her voice, just a deep, devastating lack of will. He fell back two steps and scooped her up without a word, flinging her over his broad shoulder.
“What the—”
“It’s either this, or I’m dragging you,” he warned. “What’ll it be?”
Penny shut her mouth and let him carry her up the remaining stairs, effortlessly taking them two at a time. It’s like I don’t weigh anything to him! Despite the heat and embarrassment washing over Penny, she couldn’t stop herself from inhaling Reef’s masculine scent. He was just so… near. Was he really a prince?
The echo of the wolves’ words bounced around in her head.
It’s probably just some Hollows nickname for the police or something, she thought. She knew she had a lot to learn in the way of the underworld. Not that I’m going to learn anything. I’m getting the hell out of here and never looking back. Right?
She couldn’t deny that the closeness she felt to Reef was overwhelming, and she wondered if, by some chance, she would ever see Reef again. She would first have to escape the predicament in which she found herself, Yes, Reef was something she didn’t understand, but was that a bad thing?
He’s definitely different than any man I’ve known before. Penny almost laughed, a thought of Ryland popping into her mind. If he was here, I wonder what he would have done. She had no doubt that he would have run back into the portal with the others, leaving her alone with Reef.
True to his word, Reef did stop on a landing a few minutes later, placing Penny back on her feet.
“Do you think you can walk?” he asked, and she nodded, slightly shamed by the query.
“Yes.”
“Good.” He pulled open the fire door and led her into a rank hallway, the smell almost knocking Penny to the ground. Reef wasn’t even out of breath, despite the over twenty stories he’d climbed, some with her weight.
He paused outside a grey door, so akin to the color that everything else in the Hollows seemed to be. There was so little in the way of brightness anywhere that Penny had seen, but that was hardly relevant.
“Damn,” Reef grumbled, wriggling the handle. “It’s locked.”
Penny gaped at him. “In this neighborhood? I would say that’s a wise move.”
He offered her another lopsided grin, the same one that caused her heart to skip and stall every time.
“No one would be stupid enough to so much as try this handle if they knew what was good for them,” Reef told her, reaching into the pocket of his faded jeans. For the first time, Penny realized that he was dressed in a completely casual fashion. His pants hung perfectly around his wide hips, accenting a sculpted butt.
Penny couldn’t believe she was checking out his ass. She couldn’t think of a time when she’d looked at any man the same way. It wasn’t in her nature to stare at men like pieces of meat, but in that second, all she could think about was if dragon meat tasted like steak. She wanted to sink her teeth into it and find out.
Yep, she told herself. You’re insane. Penny refocussed her hungry eyes on his hands, where she saw him looking through a huge set of keys, muttering to himself.
“Why wouldn’t anyone rob you?” she asked him, even though she could see he was still fumbling through the mass. “Because you’re the police?”
“Hollows Authority,” he corrected. “It’s a private sector. There’s no real ‘police’ around here. I’m the best they’ve got to maintain order.”
“But how do you maintain order?” Penny was fascinated. “If everyone possesses these abilities, I mean, surely there are ways to outmaneuver you with…” She was reluctant to use the word “magic,” but she couldn’t think of a better synonym for whatever was happening in the Hollows.
“Ah, you underestimate me,” Reef laughed, producing a key from the ring and trying it in the door. It opened without incident. If what he said was true and he hadn’t been to the apartment in years, centuries, even, it was an impressive feat, and Penny said so. “I have a long memory,” Reef said, but she thought she detected a note of regret in his words.
He waved at her to follow him inside, and when she did, she froze in the tiny front entrance. It was plain to see that no one had been there in eternity plus a day. The spiders, large and small, had created a city as intricate at the Trenches itself, a thick of webs so dense, she couldn’t see past the foyer.
“Okay,” Reef said, sighing. “So, it’s going to need a bit of work.”
“Is there an actual place behind here?” Penny asked dubiously. “Or is this a spider hotel?” Oh, God. What if the spiders aren’t just spiders? What if they’re… shifters?
“There’s a place,” Reef assured her. “Close the door.”
Penny wasn’t sure she wanted to, lest the arachnids turn on her, but she did anyway, keeping herself as close to the threshold as possible. Without hesitation, Reef began to cut through the webs with his bare hands, and she smothered a girlish shriek, hating herself for behaving so immaturely.
Of all the things to be afraid of, the spiders are the least of your worries.
“Just give me a minute, and I’ll get this place sorted out.”
Penny watched Reef silently for a minute, her sense of anxiety diminishing as he continued to hack through the webs. The spiders scattered in confusion, and Penny noted that Reef did his best to sidestep them. He was purposely trying not to kill them.
“You never answered my question.”
Reef peered at her, his face covered in thin white threads, the strands mingling with his own blond hair and casting an almost halo-like aura around his head. There were no lights on the space, which was proving to be much more spacious than Penny anticipated, yet that strange, silvery light seeped in through two large windows that served as the living room.
Everything about the scene seemed dreamlike to Penny, but her conscious had gotten past that now, and she knew that what she was looking at was as real as the failed life she had tried to escape in Houston.
“What question was that? There seemed to have been dozens in the past few hours.” Reef grinned to take the potential sting out of his words.
“Why are you helping me?”
“Are you complaining?”
“You’re answering a question with a question. No wonder you think there have been so many questions flying around—you’re adding to them.”
He snorted, but Penny saw a glimmer of respect in his eyes. “I already told you—twice. If I had known that the portal would kill them—”
“I got that part,” Penny interjected, and a small part of her did understand that he hadn’t meant to send her companions to their deaths. “I want to know why you’re risking yourself to hide me. I mean, even if you are the chief of police.” She was beginning to feel foolish, not knowing the right terminology to use, like she was in a foreign country. Or a foreign world.
“I’m the head of Hollows Authority.”
“Whatever you are, you can’t be beyond reproach. If you’re caught harboring me, won’t there be trouble for you?”
T
he smile on Reef’s face was a mixture of pity and remorse. “I’m not the one in danger here, Penny.” Was he saying that to put her mind at ease, or did he really believe that?
“I heard the men… er… the guys downstairs call you a prince.” There. I said it.
“Yes.”
Penny waited for Reef to elaborate, but he turned back to the task of demolishing the spider city center and left Penny guessing as to what that “yes” meant.
“Yes, what?” she finally asked in exasperation. “Yes, you heard them, too?”
“Well, yes, I did,” Reef agreed, “but that’s not why I said it.” He didn’t meet her eyes, and Penny stepped forward, now that there was somewhere to walk without being attacked by unsuspecting creatures. She closed the short distance between them and stared up at him, imploring him to look at her.
“Reef, if you’re going to keep me hidden here, maybe you can try to help me out by answering me on a few points,” she sighed, not expecting that he would oblige her request. “I’m not asking for a lot.”
“You’re asking me to keep you alive,” he countered, and Penny threw her hands up in frustration.
“Okay, sorry I had the audacity to ask questions!” she snapped, irritation flooding her. “Ignore me. I’ll sit in the corner, and you can pretend I’m a spider, too, all right?” She folded her arms and turned away from him. To her surprise, he reached out and grabbed her shoulder, spinning her back around.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” Reef told her softly. “I’ll answer your questions, okay?”
Penny eyed him warily, unsure if he was only trying to placate her to keep her quiet, but she decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“So?” she asked, a slightly tentative note in her voice now. “Why did they call you ‘prince’? Is that a nickname?”
Reef shook his head, and Penny’s pulse quickened.
“No,” he sighed heavily. “It’s because I am one. My brothers and I rule the Hollows. We took it by force, thousands of years ago.”