by E. J. King
We discovered that the top three floors were empty. The only signs of life belonged to the cockroaches and the occasional giant spider. I used the dim light of my phone to navigate.
“It’s times like this that I miss my old Soul vision,” Rafe grumbled as he peeled a spider web from his face.
It was the first time, joking or otherwise, that he had referred to his old curse. I knew that at some level, he still felt guilty for almost killing me to save himself. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t exactly given him a choice.
“It’s more exciting this way,” I said, kicking aside a cockroach the size of a rat.
“Normally, I would agree with you when it comes to sneaking around in the dark with a hot girl.” Rafe grabbed my arm, stopping me just before my foot came down on a completely rotted piece of wood. “But the risk of potentially falling to our deaths just isn’t the kind of thrill that I enjoy these days.”
I gulped as I shone my light downward and realized I could see all the way to the first floor. If Rafe hadn’t stopped me, I would’ve been injured at best. “Good save.”
“I owed you one.” He nodded to the stairs. “Come on. Let’s check out the second floor.”
The second floor started off looking a lot like the last three. Empty rooms, darkened windows, and broken floorboards. But the northern wing was different. It wasn’t exactly homey, but it was hospitable. Moonlight poured in through the windows, making my phone’s light unnecessary. I tucked it into my pocket.
“Looks like we might be onto something.” I noticed that the floors appeared to have been freshly mopped. The next door we came across was shut tight, unlike all of the other gaping openings we had passed thus far. “After you?”
Rafe eyed the door suspiciously. “You got here first. It’s only right for me to let you be the one to open it.”
“But I’m just a helpless girl. You’re a strong man.” I fluttered my eyes. “Don’t you want to go first so you can protect me from what might be on the other side of the door?”
He rolled his eyes. “Helpless girl? Whatever.”
Rafe pretended to be annoyed, but I knew he secretly liked the idea of me dependent on his manliness. He turned the doorknob and nudged the door open with his foot.
I’m not sure what I had been expecting to find on the other side, but certainly not the cavernous, sterile room that we entered. The floor, walls, and ceiling were covered in white linoleum. Or so I thought. A closer look revealed that one of the walls was actually glass.
“This is…freaky.” I stared hard at the linoleum slab table in the middle of the room. “Is this room what I think it is?”
“Maybe.” Rafe circled slowly around the table. “It wouldn’t surprise me if this is what we think it is.”
“Pull the blinds. I want to flip on the light so we can get a better look.” I waited until I was sure the outside world wouldn’t see our light before I flipped the switch. The room was even freakier with the lights on.
My jaw dropped when I looked at the glass wall and realized that it was actually a wall of doors. “Is that blood?”
It was a stupid question. We could clearly see that the room on the other side of the doors was filled with oversized cooling cabinets filled with vials of blood. And other things.
Rafe reached the doors first and slid them open without hesitating. The room smelled like bleach and antiseptic. The desks around the room looked like they were set up for high school chemistry class.
“Talk about creepy science,” Rafe said. He picked up a flask with blue liquid in it and held it to the light.
“Careful with that.” I reached for a much safer looking stack of laboratory notes. “This looks like the beginning scene of a superhero movie, except you’re going to end up as the freak-of-nature villain.”
“I think you mean studly bad guy.” He put the vial back in the holder. “Read anything interesting?”
I was having trouble reading a lot of the handwritten notes. Aside from bad penmanship, a lot of the terminology was too advanced for me to comprehend. But it wasn’t hard to understand that the experiments being done were just as abnormal as the residents of Haven.
“It looks like someone is studying Were blood. Mixing it with other types- human, Soul, Shifter. It’s not clear what exactly they are hoping to discover.” I used my phone to take pictures of the notes so I could examine them later. Then I perused the coolers.
“There are dozens of different samples in here,” I said. “This many Weres don’t even live in Haven.”
“That’s because it’s not just Were blood.” Rafe’s jaw clenched as he studied the vials in front of him.
I felt a chill go down my spine. “What is it?”
He didn’t respond so I took a look for myself and was shocked to see a dozen vials with my own name plastered on them. When I had first arrived at Haven, I’d been unconscious and had woken up in the medical wing. If I had to guess, that was when my blood had been taken.
“We should get rid of it.” Rafe started to open the cooler door.
“No.” I grabbed his arm to stop him. “They can’t know we were here. We have to leave everything just as we found it.”
He nodded reluctantly, realizing that I was right. If anyone found out that someone had broken in and taken my blood, we would naturally be the first suspects.
Just as I was about to suggest that we keep exploring, loud voices echoed up from outside. We hurried to the nearest window and Rafe cracked it open so that we could hear more clearly.
A group of men, all of them alarmingly naked, were hurrying across the square in our direction. Their state of undress indicated that they had been out hunting with the pack and had only recently shifted back to their human state.
One of the men had a small female thrown over his shoulder.
“You’re staring awfully hard,” Rafe whispered in my ear.
“Jealous?” I asked with a smirk. “Because the one in the middle…”
The man in the middle chose that very moment to open his mouth and say, “Rollins! Open the door. We need to get her into a cell.”
Once they got inside, we wouldn’t be able to hear them anymore. I couldn’t let that happen so I raced into the hall and down the stairs. At the first floor, I cracked open the stairwell door. Rafe was at my back, easily able to peer over the top of my head.
“Did Slade tell you to bring her here instead of medical?” one of the guards asked.
“Just get out of the way.” I could now see that the guy in the middle was actually Tyson, Slade’s right-hand Were.
The guard glared at Tyson and left the room.
“Put her in a cell,” Tyson ordered to the other men. “Away from the Hunter. We can’t let him see her.”
The Hunter, meaning Ethan.
“Does he know her?” One of the men asked.
“We can’t take any chances.”
The men started in our direction and we hurried up the stairs as quietly as possible. I hadn’t been able to get a good look at the girl they had captured.
Rafe and I didn’t speak until we were back on the dormitory roof. This time, the jump was less thrilling.
“They captured that poor girl,” I said when Rafe landed next to me. “We have to do something. She’s probably going to be tortured.”
“It was easy enough to get into the prison building. We could head straight down to the basement and sneak them out tomorrow night.” Rafe dusted his hands together as if it would be just that easy.
“You didn’t see the cells, Rafe. You won’t be able to just kick them down. We need the keys.” I snuck over to the edge and peeked down, but the Weres were still inside.
Rafe looked unconcerned. “So we’ll find someone with a set of keys and steal them.”
“You really think it will be that easy?”
“It doesn’t really matter because we can’t stay here. It’s pretty clear that Haven has a dark side that involves using your blood for nefarious means and throwing Hunters
in a dungeon. We can’t just stick around and see how it plays out.” Rafe sounded surprisingly angry.
“Settle down, killer.” I patted his shoulder. “We’re in agreement on this.”
“Sorry. You’re right.” He sighed. “I just don’t like thinking about what they might be planning to do with your blood.”
“Look, they only got that blood from me because I was unconscious. That’s all they are getting.” I gave him my best tough-girl face.
After a stubborn moment, he smiled. “You know I can’t resist a bad girl.”
“Then don’t.”
He reacted even faster than I expected, pulling me against his body. His hand tangled in my hair at the nape of my neck as he tilted my head back and kissed me hard on the lips. In a bit of perfect timing, something boomed loudly in the distance.
“Are those fireworks?” I gasped. Nothing could have surprised me more. We were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees on three sides. It was the dead of winter, and just beginning to snow.
“Fireworks.” Rafe laughed and because his arms were still around me, my body shook, too. “Of course. It’s New Year’s Eve, Kaylie.”
“New Year’s Eve?” My brow furrowed as I tried to recall the date. Was that really possible? “We actually survived the year?”
He laughed again. “I guess so.”
“I can’t believe it.” I started up at the sky, awed by the distant explosions of color lighting the sky. “Who knows, maybe our luck will change in the New Year.”
“I sure hope not,” Rafe said, staring hard into my eyes. “This has probably been the best year of my life.”
“You almost died. Several times. I almost died. Ethan is in a Were prison.” I could’ve kept listing out all of the terrible things that had happened just in the last few months.
“Yeah, yeah. Bad stuff like that has been happening my whole life,” he said, quickly disregarding me. “But this year, you happened to me.”
Rafe’s declarations of love didn’t happen often, but when they did happen, I fell in love with him all over again. “Yeah, well… you’re about to get even luckier,” I said.
Even though it was the dead of night, cold, and snowing, I was in no hurry to go anywhere. Tomorrow we would resume our plan to free Ethan and the girl. But for tonight, we were going to ring in the New Year the best way possible- together.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Slade put us to work the next day, sending us to scout the area for signs of a pending attack. It seemed pointless since Nolan’s pack wouldn’t attack in human form and therefore we were unlikely to see anything amiss in the middle of the day. But since Slade still held Ethan hostage, we did as we were ordered.
We walked around the area until Haven was but a distant blur behind us. If it wasn’t for the incessant image of Ethan behind bars that kept looping through my brain, I would’ve been just fine if we kept walking forever.
“This is stupid,” I finally said around lunch time. We had just stumbled into a small town that I hadn’t realized even existed. “Nolan isn’t going to be walking around in broad daylight like this. We’re wasting our time.”
“Are we?” Rafe whistled happily through his teeth.
“You can’t honestly tell me that you are enjoying this pointless assignment?” I looked at him in surprise. “I’m pretty sure we are only here because Slade was trying to get rid of us for the day.”
Rafe shrugged. “You may be right.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Nah.” He veered in front of me and stepped off the sidewalk, crossing the street without even looking for traffic.
“Where the hell are you going?” I checked both left and right before hurrying after him.
He turned, walking backward, and said, “I’m taking you to get drunk.”
“It’s the middle of the day, Rafe!”
I didn’t catch up with him until he had already gone into the diviest bar I had ever seen. The floor wasn’t just dirty, it was actually made of dirt.
“Two whiskeys,” Rafe said to the angry-looking bartender.
“This is a very bad idea,” I protested.
“Not yet.” He handed me one of the drinks. “It’s only a bad idea after we’ve had a dozen more of these.”
I downed the drink in one gulp, wincing as it burned on the way down. Slamming the glass on the table, I said, “It’s going to be a long afternoon.”
But time didn’t slow down like I expected. Rafe and I had a great time, drinking too much and playing drunk darts. After I almost hit the bartender in the eye with a wayward dart, we moved on to pool. We managed to win $100 from two bald men that were covered in tattoos. But then one of them said something inappropriate to me and Rafe punched him in the face.
The bartender used a string of obscenities asking us to leave. He also may have threatened to call the cops. After knocking over a couple of barstools, we stumbled outside and somehow made our way across the street to a playground.
“If it weren’t for those kids on the slide, I would totally be making out with you under the jungle gym right now,” I confessed in a drunken slur. I nearly fell off the swing I was sitting on, laughing as I caught myself.
“You’re a mess right now,” Rafe said. He was sitting on the swing next to mine, still drinking from the glass he had taken from the bar.
“I told you it was a bad idea.” I almost fell again and decided that I should stop thinking I was capable of swinging in the state I was in. Moving in any way was probably a big mistake. “This town has a lot of happy people.”
I’d noticed it earlier, when we first walked through town. Smiling couples walked hand-in-hand on the sidewalks, giggling children skipped down the street. Only a veteran Hunter would see those things as abnormal.
I couldn’t remember a time when I had been able to walk down the street without looking over my shoulder. Even when we were drinking in the bar I had checked everyone’s eyes for a flash of gold.
“Do you think that’s ever going to be us?” Rafe asked, digging his feet hard into the ground so that he came to an abrupt stop.
The only people in our current line-of-sight were a couple with six children.
“God, I hope not.” I flinched as one of the kids screamed loudly. “I can’t even imagine what kind of hellions your sperm would create.”
“I love it when you talk dirty to me.” Rafe suddenly grabbed my swing and turned it so that I was facing him. “Seriously though. You don’t ever think about the future? Marriage? Kids? Minivan?”
“Rafe, there’s a good chance the Weres are going to kill us tonight when we try to rescue Ethan. What’s the point in worrying about the future?”
He laughed dryly. “I’m not talking about worrying about the future, Red. I’m talking about planning for it wistfully. You know, like normal people.”
“We’re not normal people, Rafe.” I noticed that he looked oddly serious. “Wait a minute. You’re the one that told me I had to stop running from the Hunter life. You’re the one that made me give up my attempt at being a normal person.”
“I know. And I was right. Except…” He frowned. “Except maybe I was wrong.”
“Wrong?” My brain was starting to hurt. “I’m really drunk right now, so I’m going to assume that you are too and you’re just being nonsensical.”
“I’m not that drunk.” He paused for a long moment. “What if we get out of Haven and kill Benton? Will you be my normal girlfriend then?”
I allowed myself a minute to picture a normal life with Rafe. I imagined the two of us living together in a house, eating breakfast together in the mornings before heading off to normal jobs. It was what I’d always thought I wanted, but somehow it just didn’t feel right.
“That life would be a lie, Rafe. You love hunting.”
“I would give it up for you.”
I looked into his eyes and knew that he meant it. “We should get back to Haven.”
“You really
think I’m going to let you change the subject just like that?” Annoyance flashed through his eyes.
“I don’t want to do this right now. Please. Let’s just go back.” I wasn’t sure I liked this new version of Rafe. It had been a lot easier to avoid deep conversations when he had been preoccupied with hunting and hooking up.
“Fine.” He stood up abruptly. “But you can’t keep avoiding the future forever.”
“I think you’re underestimating my stubbornness.” A sudden movement at the edge of the park caught my eye. I turned swiftly, making my drunken head spin. When my vision cleared, I thought I might be hallucinating. “Do you see that?”
“Is that Violet?”
I was on my feet in a split second, heading in her direction. Seeing my mother standing at the edge of the park was an effective sobriety drug. My brain got clearer with each step. This was the woman that could answer all of my questions.
“Violet!” I called out her name without thinking. It didn’t even occur to me that she was trying not to be seen. The second she realized we spotted her, she hurried away.
“Damn it,” I cursed to myself. Without waiting for Rafe, I took off after Violet.
She vanished around a corner at the end of the block. By the time I got there, she was long gone.
“Man, she is fast.” Rafe had caught up to me easily. “I can see where you get your freakish speed.”
“There’s no way she disappeared so quickly.” I could see all the way to the end of the block. She couldn’t have made it to the end and turned the corner without me seeing her. “I think she ducked into one of these buildings.”
Both sides of the street were lined with retail shops. I walked a few steps into the middle of the road so that I could get a good look at all of the storefronts. Rafe approached an elderly couple sitting on a bench and asked them if they had seen Violet.
“Never mind, Rafe. I know where she went.”
I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did. The normal boutiques and bookshops wouldn’t appeal to a woman like Violet. But the dreary looking apothecary clearly marketed to mysterious, magically-inclined ladies like my mother.
The door chimed as I stepped inside. The first of my senses to kick in was smell. Aromatic didn’t begin to describe the experience. My eyes adjusted to the dark store several seconds later.