Night's Awakening (9 page)

Elena smiled at Con. Eagerness filled her as she realized she could finally help him see she wasn’t lying. “I’d love to help. What can I do?”

“We need you to go back into the cave.”

“Nope,” Elena said, and limped out of her room and into the hallway. “I told Guy I wouldn’t go back there, and I’m not.”

“No’ even if it clears you of suspicion?” Con asked as he followed.

Elena gripped the wall as she put too much weight on her ankle, but she kept going. “I want you to believe me. I really do, but if it means going back into that…that…cave…” She shook her head. “Forget it. I don’t care what you think of me. Press charges, do whatever you want, but don’t make me go back there.”

Guy stood in the doorway of Elena’s room and watched her gradually limping down the corridor. She was going so slowly, Con had to actually stop walking to let her get ahead.

If there had been any doubt in Guy’s mind about her innocence, it was gone now after hearing that speech. She wanted no part of the mountain.

And if a cave scared her, what would a dragon do?

Guy leaned a hand against the doorframe and sighed. He’d been about to tell her he was a dragon when Rhys had knocked. Maybe Con was right and it was best to keep their secret amongst themselves.

He’d already done enough damage by telling Elena he was immortal. But to tell her the rest of it…he couldn’t, wouldn’t now. He’d lose her for sure.

“You look like someone just shot your puppy,” Rhys said as he walked up. “I’d thought you’d be thrilled to have Con asking for Elena’s help.”

Guy didn’t bother to respond. Elena had reached the stairs and was attempting to make her way down. Con wasn’t going to stop her, so someone had to.

He started toward them, lengthening his strides when Elena gripped the railing. She was just about to jump on the first stair when Guy scooped her up in his arms.

“You’re going to kill yourself,” he ground out.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and mouth open. “I did all right these past twenty-eight years. Humans are fragile, but we heal well enough.”

Guy inwardly winced at her words. Would Con and Rhys pick up on the double meaning? Would they guess he’d told her something?

“No’ if you break your neck,” Guy said, and started down the stairs.

He didn’t know where he was going, but it didn’t matter. She was in his arms, and he had to get away from Con and Rhys to calm his thoughts and his breathing.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” she whispered.

“Nay,” he murmured.

She rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

He gave her a light squeeze and brought her to the entertainment room. Usually it was full of the other Dragon Kings, but they’d been ordered to stay away because of Elena.

“Such a huge house for just the four of you. Why do I believe there are more?” she asked, her eyes twinkling with merriment.

He didn’t answer, but she laughed just the same.

“There are. I knew it,” she whispered as he set her down on the couch.

Guy moved away from her in time to see Con raise a brow at him. There was no need to try to deny anything. He wasn’t keeping what was between him and Elena a secret.

“Verra protective,” Rhys murmured as he walked past. “A sign no one can ignore.”

Guy glared at him before turning to Elena and sitting on the arm of the couch. “Will you at least consider going back in the mountain?”

“I can’t,” she said, and picked at her fingernails. “Have none of you ever been so afraid of something that you can’t face it?”

“Nay,” Rhys said.

Guy had never encountered anything he feared. Until Elena. She scared the hell out of him because of the feelings she evoked.

“It’s no’ in our nature,” Con said as he walked to a chair opposite her.

“What you’re asking me to do is like asking someone who’s scared of heights to jump off a building,” she said.

It was the tremor in her voice that made Guy want to get up and punch Con for pushing her. Instead he gripped his knees. “You willna be alone, Elena.”

“No?” she asked, and looked at him. “I wasn’t alone with Sloan when she died. She wanted me to go down there with her. Had I gone, I’m the one that would be dead.”

The thought left Guy cold. He stood and walked around the back of the couch, raking a hand through his hair. Humans were delicate creatures. That had always been fact. But he’d never had one he wanted so desperately to be safe before.

“What if I can guarantee your safety?” Con asked her.

Guy jerked his head to Con.

Elena laughed shakily. “No one can guarantee anything but death and taxes, Con.”

“Then what can I give you that will change your mind?”

Con rarely made that offer, and when he did, he meant it. Elena could ask for anything, and Con would give it to her. Guy waited for what she would request, unsure of how he wanted her to respond.

“There’s nothing I want,” she finally said.

Con’s blond brows rose. “Nothing? I find that hard to believe. Everyone wants something.”

Guy’s breath caught when Elena looked at him.

She looked away and down at her hands folded in her lap. “If I asked for your secret, would you tell me?”

A muscle in Con’s jaw twitched, the only sign that he didn’t like where the conversation was headed. “Aye,” he said tightly.

She exhaled loudly. “I don’t want your secret. I don’t want anything from you.” She turned on the couch and faced Guy. “But I’ll help. For you.”

“In the cave?” he asked.

“Yes, though I’m going to regret it. And my threat still holds, Guy. If I die there, I’m haunting you.”

While Con and Rhys were talking, Guy let his fingers touch Elena’s on the back of the couch.

Chapter Ten

Elena asked herself for the hundredth time what she was doing back in the damned mountain. It didn’t matter that she was clipped in and connected to Guy, she was scared silly.

They’d been in the mountain for three hours, forty-seven minutes, and eighteen seconds. She knew because she kept looking at her watch.

What Elena discovered was she didn’t mind climbing up something as much as she hated climbing down. She’d managed to keep calm the deeper into the cave they went. Guy was always behind her, helping her up an incline or over something.

Rhys and Con were in front of her, but even they looked back often to check on her.

She’d had them tape her ankle securely and taken plenty of aspirin, but the pain was coming back. She dug into her pocket and pulled out two more aspirin and downed them with water.

“You’re hurting,” Guy said.

It wasn’t a question, so she shrugged and swallowed her water. “I’ll be all right.”

All three had helped to keep the majority of her weight off her injured leg, but that didn’t stop it from aching. As soon as the tape was off her ankle, it would be swollen once more.

“We’re here,” Con suddenly called.

Elena’s heart dropped to her feet like lead.
Here
meant where Sloan had fallen. And died.

“You doona have to do this.”

She looked at Guy and adjusted the strap of her helmet beneath her chin. “I do, and you know it.”

Elena put her back to the opening in the floor as Con and Rhys got everything ready for their descent. She touched Guy’s hand to get his attention.

When he looked at her, she wondered how she’d tell him what she’d found. Or if she should.

“Elena?” he asked, a frown marring his forehead. “What is it? Do you want to return to the house?”

She paused, contemplating if she should tell him. “I saw something, well a couple of somethings, as we were making our way here.”

“Rock?” he asked with a teasing grin.

“Smart-ass.” She couldn’t stop her smile, though. Her hand covered the marking behind her as she leaned back. She thought of the beautiful dragon tattooed on Guy’s body and of the markings.

“First, tell me what
Dreagan
means?”

Guy grew instantly still, all traces of teasing gone. “Why?”

“Please. Just tell me what the word means.”

“It’s Gaelic,” he said slowly. “It means ‘dragon.’”

Elena took a deep breath, excitement and fear mixing within her. She stepped aside to reveal the carving in the rock. It was about the size of a man’s hand, and would have been missed had her light not fallen upon it as she sat down.

“I’ve seen a couple of these today,” she said as Guy squatted beside the picture of a dragon in flight. “All of them are different. Some in flight, some sleeping, some with their wings spread.”

Guy still said nothing. He traced the drawing with his finger before he stood and faced her.

“Dragons. The meaning of your distillery. Your tat. The drawings in the mountain. It all comes back to you, doesn’t it? What does it mean?”

Indecision warred across his face. He glanced at his friends, and when his gaze returned to her, there was despair. “You’re no’ going to like my answer.”

“What? That you can’t tell me?”

“Do you keep an open mind about things?”

His tone was soft, his question serious. She thought of the way he’d loved her and held her. How he’d kissed her with more passion and need than she had ever known was possible.

“If you mean if I believe in ghosts, the answer is yes. Aliens, well, I’m not sure there. I don’t think we’re the only ones in the entire universe. There’s something else out there I’m sure of it.”

“And my immortality?”

She shrugged, growing more unsure of things as the conversation continued. “I don’t know how it’s possible or why. My first thought is to doubt you, but then I look at you. You aren’t like other men. There’s something…more…to you, Guy.”

“I want to tell you,” he whispered, and grasped her elbows as he pulled her closer.

“I want you to know. Keep an open mind, Elena.
Keep looking
.”

She was about to ask him what he wanted her to look for, when Rhys took her arm.

“It’s time, Elena. I need to get you secured to the line.”

She was so caught up in her conversation with Guy that she paid no attention to Con lowering himself into the hole. Not even when she found her feet dangling in the air and Rhys holding her did it bother her.

Rhys was talking, but she didn’t hear his words. It wasn’t until Guy took her hand that she was able to focus again.

“Elena,” he said.

She blinked and looked from Guy to Rhys. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re frightened. No one blames you,” Rhys said.

Elena let him believe the lie. She turned to Guy and took his hand.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he said. “Rhys is staying up here to watch everything. You’ll have both Con and me with you. You’ll be safe.”

“No one is safe if the bolts come out or the rope unties.”

Rhys laughed and rapped his knuckles atop her helmet before he began to lower her. “With us, you’re safe. You couldna be safer, lass.”

She told herself not to look down, but she did it anyway. She had to breathe out of her mouth as she grew nauseated. Her fingers ached inside her gloves, which gripped the rope.

“You’re almost here,” Con said from below. “You’re doing good, Elena.”

A compliment? From Con? Her fear must really show. Elena closed her eyes and put her forehead to her hands.

“Keep looking.”

Guy’s whispered words floated through the fog of her trepidation. She licked her lips and forced her head up and her eyes open.

She turned her head and thought she caught a glimpse of something bounce off her headlamp. Before she could ask Rhys to slow her descent, she gasped when her gaze landed on something shiny in the rock.

“What is it?” Guy asked from above.

A second later, and he was hanging beside her. Elena leaned toward the rock wall that was easily six feet from her, but even from that vantage point, there was no mistaking the small bit reflecting her light.

“It’s a gem.”

“A gem?” Con asked, unimpressed.

Elena grunted in answer as she squinted to get a better look. “I think it’s a yellow sapphire. Matter of fact, I’m almost positive it is.”

She was lowered more until she was even with Con. He hung on one side of her and Guy on the other. Elena could only gasp as she spotted even more sapphires in the rock.

“You’ve got a fortune down here,” she whispered in amazement. But it was Con and Guy’s lack of response that intrigued her. She looked at Guy. “You knew the gems were here?”

“Aye,” Con answered for Guy.

Elena turned her head to him. “Why haven’t you done anything?”

“Why? We doona need the money they’ll bring.”

“Nor do you want people on your land,” she said as understanding dawned.

Con inhaled, his nostrils flaring. “Do you think this is what caught Sloan’s interest?”

Elena looked around her and then up to where she could see Rhys. She tried to think back to when she was peering down at Sloan. At one point, she’d barely been able to hear Sloan.

“No,” Elena said. “She was farther down.”

Guy made a motion, and the next instant Elena was moving downward again. While Con and Guy controlled their own ropes, it was Rhys who had hers.

Every few minutes, they would stop so she could look around, but she had yet to find anything that would draw Sloan’s notice.

Until she saw the drawings.

“Stop!” she yelled to Rhys.

She lurched as she was instantly halted. Elena pointed to the drawings of multiple dragons on the stones, some in combat, and said, “That’s what Sloan was looking at.”

Con didn’t say anything, simply looked at the drawings. He looked at each one as if learning it in detail, and then he started the climb back up.

Elena looked at Guy. “This isn’t good, is it?”

“Nay,” Guy said.

“All the dragon…stuff. It involves you, all of you.” Everything kept pointing back to Guy, which had led her to this conclusion. But
how
was still a mystery.

“You’re no’ supposed to know.”

“I do. So tell me the rest.”

He shook his head slowly.

“Just tell me if the dragons somehow involve you,” she begged.

His pale brown eyes met hers. “And if I said aye?”