Page 11 of Burn for the Dragon
Her boss cut her off with a slash of his hand. “That’s not why I called you in here. I’m sending you out on a new story. A real story. I just got word that the cops have someone holed up in a house six blocks away over in Sandy Hills. The guy ran into a house and is holding a couple of teenagers hostage. I want updates every quarter hour, and I want you to get in there and get all the statements you can. Find out who this guy is, his history, etcetera, etcetera.”
Everly stared at him, her pen poised above her notepad. He was talking so fast it took her a minute to catch up. When he finally stopped and sat staring at her with his eyebrows raised high, she realized he was waiting for a response from her, and she cleared her throat. “Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but why not send Tyson? He’s been dying to get out on a story like this, and I’m already working on the feature we agreed upon.”
Mr. Malone rubbed his forehead, his arm blocking his mouth at times while he spoke. But Everly didn’t have to read every word to know she wasn’t going to like what he was saying, his body language told her everything she needed to know. When he looked up at her, his eyes begged her to understand.
But still, she had to be sure. “Mr. Malone?”
“Everly, I know you really believe there are things out there that go bump in the night. And I was willing to let you pursue it as long as you didn’t have anything else to do and didn’t piss anyone off too much. But now I’ve got a real story here for you.” He smiled. “I’m giving you your shot at a real career here.”
Her stomach dropped. “But, I thought you were on board with this. I have evidence, Mr. Malone. When I spoke to you?—”
“You thought you saw something in the sky, Everly. Something that looked like a…dragon, was it? And you thought you saw a vampire one night when you were walking home.”
She did see a vampire. Three months ago, when her car was in the shop after someone T-boned her at an intersection and she had to use other means of transportation to get back and forth from the office. He’d run away when she came around the corner of the covered bus stop, a blur of color under the streetlights. No human could move that fast. And the man it had been feeding on had had two fresh puncture wounds on his neck and didn’t remember a damn thing about where he’d gotten them. And yes, she’d seen something in the sky when she’d walked outside late one night to appreciate the beauty of the moon. And it wasn’t a bird, or a plane, or anything else she could explain.
And, if she wasn’t mistaken, she’d met a second vampire the night she met Hawke.
Mr. Malone laid his palm flat on his desk in front of her to get her attention. “Honey, this is your shot. You should take it. If you still want to pursue that other story when this is over or off hours, that’s up to you.” Leaning forward in his chair, he stuck his finger in her face. “But I need facts, Everly. Cold, hard facts. Photos. Audio. Video would be even better. I need proof that cannot be disproved before I let something like creatures who turn into bats at night grace the front page of my paper. Is that understood?”
Even without hearing the tone of his voice, she knew he thought this was all some crazy hoax, and yet a wave of relief washed over her. She could continue to investigate on her own, but having the paper backing her would give her a reason to be nosing around. “Yes. I understand.”
“Great! Now get the hell out of here. And take Tyson with you. Oh, and Everly…”
She stood up and waited for him to finish.
“Don’t let your fascination with all of this supernatural bullshit get in the way of the real story. Cops. Bad guy. Hostages. Now, go.” Picking up the phone, he began to bark orders into the mouthpiece at some other poor soul.
Everly hustled back out to her desk, glad she’d grabbed her raincoat at the last minute when she’d ran out of her apartment that morning, because by the looks of the darkening sky, she was gonna need it. Her mind raced as she gathered what she needed and waited for Tyson to get his things.
“I’ll drive.” He signed the words even as he spoke them.
She rolled her eyes and signed, “Fine.” Tyson had learned ASL shortly after they’d started working together three years ago. He’d never told her. He’d just shown up one day and started signing.
Caught off guard, Everly had been slightly embarrassed at first. She’d worked hard throughout her entire life to make her deafness a non-issue, learning to read lips and going to speech therapy. She wore hearing aids to amplify the few lower tones she could hear, and kept her hair long to cover them, though it made for more work for her to keep the crazy stuff somewhat tame. She’d learned to not only survive, but to do anything a hearing person could do.
Other than heed the warnings of car horns honking at her. Which was why Tyson insisted on driving.
Ten hours and forty-two minutes later, frustrated and tired, she pulled into her parking space in front of her apartment building and trudged up the stairs to her corner apartment. As soon as she locked her door behind her, she dropped her keys and her tote bag on the couch and kicked off her shoes, pushing the tops of her feet into the carpet one by one to ease the ache of wearing heels all day. Then she picked up her shoes and her bag and walked back to her bedroom. She didn’t need to turn on any lights. Her apartment was on the end, and the soft illumination of the streetlights came in through her windows. And being that her place was basically one long room—the only door was on the bathroom in the back—they were sufficient so she wouldn’t trip over anything.
Everly didn’t mind the layout, or the intrusion of the lights. She liked being able to open her eyes at night and see all the way to her front door. Unless someone was hiding in her bathroom or the alcove of her tiny kitchen, she would see them. It wasn’t much, but it helped her feel more secure.
She also had silent alarms that would vibrate and flash little red lights on the alert on her nightstand if anyone broke in through the front door or windows. One push of a panic button and the police would be notified to come check it out. She wasn’t stupid.
Crawling up onto her bed, a cozy hodgepodge of mismatched pillows and colors like everything else in her place, Everly pulled out her laptop and sent a quick email to Mr. Malone, telling him she’d be in first thing in the morning with her story about the hostage situation. A few hours after she and Tyson had gotten there, the guy surrendered and came out of the house. They’d followed them down to the police station, along with every other reporter on the scene, to hear the official statement given by the police. Then they’d gone back to the neighborhood to try to find any eyewitnesses who could give her a better perspective on what had happened.
She’d lucked out and happened upon an elderly neighbor who’d been outside retrieving her trashcan when it had all gone down and had hung out to watch the drama unfold with one of her neighbors. They’d made a day of it with snacks and lemonade, like they were watching a reality show up close and personal, and the nice woman had made sure Everly had every detail she needed. Then that neighbor had gone and done one better. Her nephew happened to be one of the officers who’d responded to the call. And he was also single, don’t you know. So, she’d called him up and talked him into coming back to talk to the “pretty newspaper girl”. Lucky for Everly, he had a thing for redheads, and he’d been very obliging, telling her everything that happened along with a few small details the other reporters didn’t get.
She should be thrilled she’d gotten a chance at such a story. Even if she did have to fib a little and tell the young officer she had a boyfriend. But Everly felt anything but. Instead of feeling a sense of accomplishment with her career, she was distracted and restless. Her mind whirling with everything she’d found out about The Caves.
And about Hawke.
Which, she had to admit, wasn’t much. Except that he was extremely good-looking, extremely confident in a hot, non-ego type of way, extremely sexy, extremely mysterious…
And extremely not human.
Human men didn’t suddenly grow fangs or lose the whites of their eyes after smelling a girl. Or order them to forget any of that even happened while staring hard into their eyes and probing at their brain matter.
Oh, yeah. She’d felt it.
