“Hawke?”
His chest rose and fell on a breath. Nodding his head slightly, he walked around her and sat down in the chair beside the bed. Idly, he picked up the book laying there—a historical about WWII from the looks of it. Putting it back, he gave her an impersonal smile. “What would you like to talk about?”
Everly kicked off her shoes and climbed up onto the bed. She hadn’t really expected him to stay, and now that she had him here, she had no idea what to say. “Why don’t you tell me about your life. It’s gotta be a lot more interesting than mine.”
“My life.” He scraped his fingertips through his beard. “What would you like to know?”
Everly shrugged. “Everything. When were you born? Where are you from? What’s it like being a vampire?”
He studied her for a few seconds. Then he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. Tonight, he wore a tangerine shirt and black slacks, and with his dark hair and beard, the combination was absolutely yummy. “It’s…” He paused for a long time. “Monotonous.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Monotonous?” It wasn’t the answer she would have expected from someone who had the time and the money to do anything he pleased.
A smile teased the corners of his mouth. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Yes.” His chest rose and fell on a deep sigh. “Vampires live the same day over and over and over again. I look the same. I feel the same. My diet never changes.” At this, the smile broadened before it slowly slid away. “People are born, and people die. Cities rise and fall. The technology improves. The seasons change. But in the end, it’s all the same. You wake, you feed, you find ways to amuse yourself, you avoid those who would hunt you, you hide from the sun. And then tomorrow you start all over again.”
He glanced at her, eyes shifting away again as though he hadn’t meant to say so much, waving away his words as if they meant nothing. But she could see the sadness in his words. “To answer your first question, I’ve lived a long time. Long enough to sound like a grouchy old man.”
She gave him a moment to come back from wherever his head was. “Are you from America?”
“No. I was born a vampire in Europe.”
“What about before that? You were human before you were a vampire, right?”
“No. I was born a vampire. Just as you were born a dragon.”
Everly was stunned. “So, you weren’t turned? You can’t turn someone else?”
Hawke shook his head. “No. But that’s probably a good thing. Many stupid decisions probably would’ve been made before I was old enough to realize the true meaning of having children.”
Fascinated with this up close and personal supernatural history lesson, she asked, “What brought you here to the states?”
“My brother.” He stared down at the floor. “He was my half-brother, actually. We didn’t advertise our relationship.” Something resembling a smile twisted his mouth. “His choice. Not mine. Although I was glad for it in his later years.”
“Why is that?”
“Because he was batshit crazy.” Leaning back in his chair, he shrugged it off. “We parted ways for a long time. Then word came to me that he was Master of his own misfit coven in a place you would never expect vampires to live. It made a stupid kind of sense, though. Living in the middle of a place early settlers called hell itself, and so I joined him.”
Everly looked around the living quarters she was in. “This place? Your brother—sorry, half brother—was the Master of this coven?”
Hawke nodded. “Yeah.”
“I thought Kohl killed the last Master?”
“He did.”
“And you did nothing about it?”
He looked at her like the thought had never occurred to him. “And what would you expect me to do? Avenge him? He brought it on himself. Kohl challenged him and won. It was a fair fight. The coven has accepted him as their new Master.”
She thought about that for a moment. “Isn’t there some kind of rule of lineage, though? Like royal families? Whoever has the same blood as the previous Master gets the throne?” It made sense, though she had no idea if this was true or not.
His only response was to shrug, which told Everly she’d hit it right on the mark.
“Hawke, if you should be Master of this coven, why not take your rightful place?” And, if he was the one who made the rules, then they could be changed. Like the rule about dragons and vampires not being able to “co-exist”.
But he either didn’t see the possibilities, or he didn’t care enough to fight for a chance with her, for he only said, “I’m not cut out to lead anyone.”
Everly asked him to repeat himself, thinking she couldn’t possibly have understood that correctly. She may have only known Hawke for a short time, but she’d seen him in action. He was confident and capable and kind, but strong when he needed to be. It seemed like a strange thing to say about a vampire, but all night she’d watched from her bar stool as others had come to him about issues, and he’d handled them all with a calm, fair logic she envied. And modesty wasn’t one of his strong points, so it wasn’t some misplaced sense of humility he was coming from. “What makes you think that?”
