by Alysha Ellis
But he didn’t think it would come to that. Hopewood had set him up to die. He would have no reason to think he’d failed. As long as Elijah and his two… Followers? Assistants? Guards? Stuffed if he knew what they were, but as long as they avoided drawing notice to themselves, they had a reasonable chance of succeeding in their mission.
He signed for the room, took the keycard and walked toward the elevator. As he’d expected, the kid at reception headed straight back into the office. Elijah ducked back outside, grabbed the Dvalinn and ushered them through the deserted vestibule and into the elevator.
He pressed the button and the elevator began to rise. Eora and Nieko hit the deck, arms splayed, knuckles white, fingers arched as they tried to dig into the floor.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Elijah said, reaching down a hand to haul first Nieko then Eora to their feet. “You two can take teleporting without a whimper and this scares you?”
Nieko squared his shoulders and glared at Elijah. “I’m not frightened.”
“We’ve lost contact with the Earth,” Eora whispered. “I’ve never felt like that.” Her eyes were wide with shock. “How can you live when your connection to the Earth is broken?”
“It doesn’t matter to us,” Elijah replied. Both Dvalinn stood with their backs pressed up against the wall of the elevator. Nieko’s jaw was clenched. A small muscle twitched in his cheek but he held Eora in a protective embrace. Her face was pale. For the first time, she’d lost the look of alert self-confidence.
The car lurched to a stop. Elijah flung out his hand in time to stop them falling face-first to the floor again. “We’re here.” Neither Dvalinn moved. “Come on. Out! The sooner you step outside this moving box, the sooner you’ll be on solid foundations again.”
Eora and Nieko nearly knocked him over in their rush to get through the door.
Elijah shook his head. “The room is down here.”
He swiped his card and the door swung open. Eora and Nieko had only taken one step inside when they began to back out again.
“What now?” Elijah asked in exasperation.
“We’re in the sky!” Eora’s head swung back to the wall of windows at the far end of the room. “How can we be in the sky?”
“Don’t you know anything about the surface world?” Elijah asked.
“We know a damn sight more than you knew about the Dvalinn world,” Nieko retorted.
Since he couldn’t argue, Elijah ignored it. “It’s safe,” he explained. “It’s the way humans build in cities.”
Eora walked gingerly across the room and tapped the glass. “I don’t understand why you would want to cut yourself off from the sun and rain.”
“I don’t understand why humans do anything,” Nieko snarled.
“Looks as if you’ve got a steep learning curve coming up then,” Elijah said. He pushed his way past them and pulled the curtains shut. “There. Now ignore where we are.” Once the view was hidden he thought the normality of the room—one king-sized bed, a tiny desk and an easy chair—would help them to settle. “Sit down. We have to find Hopewood. We aren’t going to be able to do that if you two freak out every time you come across something unusual.”
“Nobody’s gonna freak out,” Nieko growled. “It was a shock. We’re over it. We’re not children. If you keep treating us that way, you won’t like the results.” He sat on the bed, tucked a couple of pillows behind his head and leaned back. Elijah thought of pointing out that he still had his boots on, but what the hell. If Nieko didn’t see anything wrong with it, why should he bother? They were going to be in trouble for a lot more than boot marks on a coverlet before they’d finished.
“So,” Nieko said, “where does this Hopewood bastard live and when do we go and get him?”
“It’s not that simple,” Elijah said.
“Why not?” Eora plonked herself down on the side of the bed next to Nieko and looked up at Elijah. Her color was better. She looked eager, ready for action.
No matter how eager she was, there were a few facts she had to be told.
“Hopewood has a guard and a damn good security system.”
“But he thinks we’re all dead, you included,” Eora reminded him.
“Hopewood is obsessed. He never gives up. He won’t relax until he’s certain the Dvalinn were destroyed.” Elijah paced the room, back and forth, rubbing the back of his neck as he did so. “It won’t be easy to get into his headquarters. When I reappear, he’s not going to welcome me with open arms.”
“Fine,” Nieko said. “You stay here. Eora and I go there. We throw a couple of fireballs. Job done.”
Elijah raised his eyebrows. “Do you know how Hopewood controls Dvalinn? Did you ask Huon and Tybor what happened to them?”
Eora shook her head. Nieko didn’t move from his prone position, but Elijah could see the tension in his muscles.
“Your friend, Judie, made Hopwood a device to broadcast an electrical energy field. Any Dvalinn in range is immobilized. The pain is torture and, if it goes on long enough, fatal. If you attempt to storm Hopewood’s headquarters you’ll be a screaming bundle of agony before you even get to the gate.”
“Judie did that?” Eora whispered.
“So Hopewood says. I can only assume she regrets it from what I saw when we were underground.” Lije drew a deep breath. “She got the chance to atone for her mistake. I want the same.”
“So what do you suggest we do?” Nieko demanded.
“We stay here for the rest of the day. Well, you do.” Elijah replied. “I need to go out and get supplies.”
“What supplies? We should come too if they have anything to do with us,” Nieko said, his hands sliding out from behind his head as he sat up.
“No, not the way you’re dressed. You wait here.” He frowned at them, hoping they wouldn’t put up an argument.
No chance.
“What’s wrong with the way we’re dressed?” Nieko challenged.
“You’re not wearing a shirt for a start,” Elijah said.
“Pah. Shirts are for women.”
“Not here they’re not. Everyone wears a shirt. In winter they wear a jacket as well. It’s cold, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“We’re tough,” Eora said.
“You’d still stand out. We all need better clothes. I’m going to get them.”
“You’re not leaving here on your own.” Nieko stood, getting right in Elijah’s face.
“I’ll go with you,” Eora stated. “I have a shirt.”
“You have a singlet,” Elijah said, his voice rising in exasperation. “It’s not the same.”
“Either she goes with you, or you don’t go.” Nieko moved to stand in front of the door, arms folded, feet spread apart.
Elijah huffed out a frustrated breath. “All right. She can come with me.” He turned to Eora, “You say nothing and obey any instruction I give, okay?”
She nodded.
“And try not to do anything to broadcast the news you’re a stranger here.”
“I won’t, I…”
Elijah didn’t stop to listen to her. He headed for the door and she broke off to scurry after him. In the elevator she clenched the railing, white-knuckled and pale-faced, but she kept completely silent.
He strode into the town with Eora silently beside him, her legs working hard as she strove to match his long-legged pace. Although her head swung from side to side and occasionally she stumbled in her efforts to take everything in, she didn’t say a word.
His first stop was a chain store where he could get the clothes they needed. Again he used his credit card. Even if Hopewood was looking for him, by the time he’d traced the cards, they’d be gone.
Still without speaking to Eora, he found a car rental agency and hired a medium-sized sedan. He loaded most of the things he’d bought into the trunk, except one he tossed into the backseat. Eora stood beside him, her eyes wide.
“Get in,” he said.
“In that metal cage?” She
shook her head.
“It’s transport. It won’t hurt you.”
He opened the passenger door. With a nudge that bordered on an outright shove, he got her into the seat. He slammed the door shut, then thought better of it, opened it again and reached in and clicked the seatbelt shut. Then he raced around to the driver’s side.
When he got in, she turned to him, her expression hurt. “You tied me in? What have I done to deserve that?”
“What? No, it’s a seatbelt. It’s for your safety. Everyone has to wear one in a car. See?” He clicked his own belt into place. “I was doing yours for you because I knew you wouldn’t know how.” He’d also wanted to be sure he had time to get in the car before she decided to run off on her own, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.
He turned the key and the engine ticked over. Eora jumped so hard that if she hadn’t been strapped in, her head would have hit the roof.
“It’s the engine. It won’t hurt you.” He shook his head. Judie had been right when she’d said they’d need him on the surface. If these two had tried to get to Hopewood on their own they’d have been arrested before they made it through the outer circle at Stonehenge. “Just relax. You said you wanted to find out about the human world. Well, here it is.”
He put the car in gear and drove. Eora, her nose plastered against the window, reminded him of a dog he’d owned when he was a kid. He laughed suddenly. There was nothing remotely doglike about the very gorgeous, very sexy Dvalinn sitting next to him.
He pulled into a supermarket parking lot and reached back to pull out the bag he’d put there. “Here,” he said, pulling out a sweater. “Put this on. It’ll keep you warm and make you fit in better.”
She frowned but obeyed. He led her into the supermarket.
He grabbed a basket and walked toward the back of the store. “Don’t draw attention to yourself, okay?”
But he was speaking to thin air. Eora was standing in the middle of the aisle, turning slowly, her hands outstretched.
She dived forward, grabbed an orange and held it out to him. “Look, Elijah. A little sun.”
He snatched it from her and dropped it into the basket. “It’s an orange. You told me you had fresh food in the…where you come from. Surely you have fruit.” He glanced around to see if anyone was watching. An old lady near them was smiling at them. He realized Eora’s stunningly exotic looks and her unusual accent meant most people would assume she was a tourist. Which, he supposed, in some sense of the word she was.
She pounced on a banana, wrapping her fingers around it, before she answered him. “We have lots of vegetables. They do well in our artificial light. We have some fruits, but not like this. The colors are so intense, and the smell.” She held the banana to her nose and Elijah snatched that away too. Cute was cute, but the sight of her holding the banana up to her face, as clichéd as it was, made his cock swell. He guessed it proved that clichés were what they were for a reason.
“Come on,” he said. “We need to get food and get back to the hotel before Nieko decides to do something stupid.”
He ushered her through the supermarket, putting what he thought they might need in the basket, trying to stop her from adding some of everything that caught her eye.
“We don’t need cat food,” he said, putting the box with the picture of a kitten Eora had apparently fallen instantly in love with back on the shelf. “Or five bunches of flowers.”
He finally got her out of the door, stowed the groceries he’d bought in the trunk and headed back to the hotel. There were no further incidents—not if he didn’t count her ear-piercing shriek when she saw a horse or the brief moment when he had to lean over and pull the door shut when she wanted to get out to see how the traffic lights worked.
He braced himself for what he’d find when he opened the door to their room. But when the lightweight faux wood panel swung open, Nieko was sitting exactly where they’d left him. Elijah didn’t know whether it was because he trusted Eora to make sure he returned or whether the whole process for getting down from a room in the sky back to ground level was too daunting.
He dug into one of the sacks and dragged out a range of foodstuffs. “Eat,” he said, “while I explain what we’re going to do.”
“There are so many good things here, Nieko.” Eora sighed and pulled out a plastic-wrapped packet. She ripped it open and took a bite. Her eyes rolled upward, her pupils dilated and her breath eased out in a long moan. “Oh.”
Poison! Whatever she’d eaten must have reacted badly with her system. Elijah leaped to his feet, ready to administer first aid, cardiac compression—anything to restore her to life.
She moaned again. “This is the best, most amazing thing I have ever tasted. Nieko, you have to try it.” She offered him the slice of pecan Danish.
Nieko looked at Elijah, shrugged and took a bite. While he didn’t go into the orgasmic convulsion that had shaken Eora, a smile spread across his face. “The surface has some advantages, human. This is good.”
“Shit, Eora, I thought you were choking or something.”
Nieko smirked, a few crumbs trickling from his mouth. “What’s the matter? Don’t you remember her orgasm face? It isn’t that long since you saw it. Or maybe you didn’t. Maybe you weren’t good enough.”
“I saw it, you prick, and so did you,” Elijah snapped. “Don’t try to pretend you didn’t watch everything we did that night.”
“Nieko?” Eora tore herself away from the delights of the pastry long enough to ask. “Nieko watched?” Her forehead wrinkled. “I thought you weren’t interested in sex.”
“Well you thought wrong,” Nieko muttered. “Can we get on with the plan?”
“Sure,” Elijah said. He outlined what he intended to do. Eora and Nieko listened, nodded occasionally, asked some questions, and by the time several hours had passed they had agreed on a detailed plan for attacking Hopewood’s warehouse.
“We’re safe here for now,” Elijah told them. “First thing tomorrow, we get this done.”
“Time to get some rest,” Eora said, standing and stretching. Even wearing the sweater he’d bought, her body was alluring. His cock stirred. “I’m going to wash.”
“Do you know how to use the shower?” Lije asked.
“We’re not the filthy animals you seem to think we are,” Nieko snapped. “We’re not idiots.”
Elijah threw up his hands. “I wasn’t trying to insult you. You didn’t know about the elevator, or cars or…”
Eora patted him on the bum. A shiver of desire raced in a warm sizzle from her hand straight to his groin. “I’ve got a good idea. Why don’t you come with me and show me how it works?”
Oh yeah. That’d work. Lije pushed up off the side of the bed, his shirt halfway over his head.
Before he’d taken a single step, something hard and flat slammed into his chest.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Nieko spoke from inches away. “Eora can take a shower. You and I are gonna go over the plan again.”
The bundle of cloth finally cleared his head and hit the floor. Elijah stared down at Nieko’s firm brown hand splayed on his chest. Then he followed the long line of his arm up and across his shoulders. The Dvalinn’s mouth was set in a determined line. Hard brown eyes stared at him.
“But Nieko…”
“Go take your shower, Eora. You can figure out how it works on your own,” he snapped.
“But if you’re going over the plan again, I want—”
“Just details. I’ll tell you anything you need to know later. Go.” Nieko bit out the order to her but his gaze never wandered from Elijah’s face. Like hell this had anything to do with plans for raiding Hopewood’s headquarters.
“But I—”
“Just go, Eora,” Lije said. “Nieko’s got something to say to me. I don’t think he wants you to hear it.”
She looked from one to the other, then shrugged. “Men. Can’t live with them, can’t leave them underground.” She stomped off i
nto the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
“So what’s the problem, Nikky?” he said as the echoes faded. The sound of running water replaced them.
“My name’s Nieko, and the problem is you.”
Elijah reached up, wrapped his hand around Nieko’s wrist and pulled it off his chest. “Yeah, I don’t think so. Have you heard the expression dog in the manger in your world?” He opened his fingers and let Nieko’s hand drop back to his side.
“We don’t have dogs and I have no idea what a manger is. Why don’t you explain it to the poor, dumb Dvalinn?” Sarcasm dripped like acid from Nieko’s carved lips.
“It means you don’t want something but you don’t want anyone else to have it either.” Elijah did a bit of chest poking of his own. “Except you do want Eora, but for some reason you can’t have her.”
Nieko made a strangled sound. “That’s not—”
“Not what? The truth? Bullshit. Tell me this is not about you wanting her.”
Nieko opened his mouth but shut it again without speaking.
“Yeah, right,” Elijah said. “You want her and it burns you up that I’ve had her.” He leaned forward. “You’ve done a lot of talking about me not telling the truth, and yeah, that was justified, but you’re not telling the truth either. There’s something going on with you. Whatever it is, it’s big. I watched you that night and you were so turned on. You’ve known her for years. Why haven’t you done her?” Elijah raised an eyebrow. “She won’t let you? Nah, it can’t be that. She says you’re not interested in sex. Now why would she think that?” He paused and took a long look at Nieko. “Unless she has good reason to think that. What’s the problem, Nikky? Can’t get it up for her?”
Nieko’s fist swung. Elijah ducked. The return punch was already on its way when Eora’s outraged roar erupted from the bathroom. “Stop! Both of you. Right now.”