I swallowed hard. If my dad didn’t get out of jail ASAP, I was seriously screwed. More screwed than I already was, that is.
Ethan reached over and took my hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb. The contact sent a little zing through me. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll be safe with Kimber and me.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him skeptically, though my heart was going pitter-pat at the feel of his hand on mine. No, it wasn’t any big deal, but it was new to me. Dating was part of everyday life for most girls my age, but between keeping up with my schoolwork and running the household when Mom was too drunk to bother, I didn’t exactly have a lot of free time. The one and only date I’d ever agreed to go on ended in disaster when my mom got drunk and fell down the stairs. I had to take her to the emergency room when I was supposed to be meeting my date, and I was too chicken to reschedule.
“You look exhausted,” Ethan said gently. “Would you like to lie down and get some rest? Kimber and I are kind of the co-leaders of the Underground, so we should stay until the party’s over. Or I could get you a beer and you can join us if you’d like.”
The “party” seemed to consist of people sitting around drinking and talking. Not exactly tons of excitement when my body kept wanting to drag me back down into sleep. “I think maybe I’ll just close my eyes for a minute,” I said, fighting a yawn.
Ethan let go of my hand and slid off of the love seat onto the floor, making room for me. When I lay down, I noticed the spot where he’d been sitting was deliciously warm. I snuggled into that warmth, painfully aware that Ethan was sitting close enough to touch. His hair was so shiny it seemed to glow in the torchlight. I found myself fascinated, mesmerized by the play of light as sleep crept up and seized me.
chapter seven
So far, each time I’d woken up in Avalon, something majorly sucked. This time was no exception.
A piercing scream brought me from dead asleep to wide-awake panic in one second flat. A couple more voices joined in, the screams bouncing and pinging off the stone walls and ceiling. Some of the torches had gone out, leaving parts of the cave hidden by shadows.
Ethan sprang to his feet in front of me, and to my shock, a long, thin knife appeared in his hand. “To me!” he bellowed, loud enough to be heard over the sounds of terror, and soon a handful of the students came charging out from between the stalagmites toward him.
Two human boys were supporting a third, whose shirt was shredded, his chest bleeding from what looked like claw marks. Behind them, Kimber and the Fae boy she’d been so chummy with were backing toward us instead of running, each menacing the surrounding darkness with knives that looked just like Ethan’s.
I clutched the afghan tightly under my chin, totally mystified as to what was going on, knowing only that it was bad. Really bad, judging by the wide-eyed terror on the human boys’ faces.
“Don’t move!” Ethan ordered me without turning to look, and he stepped forward to put himself between us humans and … whatever was out there.
Realizing the wounded boy was about to collapse, I sprang off the love seat. His friends gave me appreciative nods as they laid him down. The wounds on his chest looked nasty, and there was enough blood to make me feel light-headed. I had the sensation that I’d stepped into the middle of a nightmare. This just couldn’t be happening. My life was aggravating in the extreme, but it wasn’t dangerous. There had to be some perfectly reasonable explanation for the screaming, the bleeding, and the weapons.
The sense of unreality kept me from being as scared as I should have been. One of the boys tore his sweatshirt off over his head and stuck it over the wound, applying pressure. The wounded boy groaned in pain.
To my shock, the other boy had drawn a gun, though he pointed it at the floor as his eyes darted back and forth, searching for a target.
What kind of students were these?
I stopped worrying about the gun when an awful shrieking sound, like fingernails on a blackboard, only ten times