Rock Star Romance: Dan (Contemporary New Adult Rockstar Bad Boy Romance) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 4) (29 page)

****

Charlie kept whipping
his face against the vibrating glass of the shuttle’s window to catch glimpses
of the streets and houses zipping by the van, and it was starting to rub the
skin of his forehead raw, but he couldn’t help it— the town looked so different.
Sierra Leandra was technically in San Diego county, but with its neatly divided
sections, it looked more like a mini version of the county itself: wide open
spaces for the first ten miles, populated with squat scrubs whose thin soils
were graced with sprawling ranch houses and apathetic farm animals who milled
border of the town; then came gas stations and main freeway exits; then strip
malls started to pop up alongside boxy duplexes and apartment buildings
surrounding the three public schools. There were two churches and a community
college, a rec center, two malls, then a small business and entertainment
district that blended nicely together on Friday evenings. On the other side of
the bars and banks were gaudy houses—mini-mansions with huge bay windows and
tall cream doors that opened into the sort of meticulously styled and polished
rooms that begged to be lounged in by people of the same caliber. Charlie knew
the layout of the town like the back of his hand, knew what each building would
look like painted blue or yellow or burned down to black ash and rebuilt in
brick, but he never thought he’d see it this way.

The streets were
completely empty, save for a few lonely adults strolling along the sidewalks or
going into shops. Every window he could see was shuttered, and some were even
boarded up. The rural part of town was even empty of llamas and geese—when he
tried to focus on smelling them with his eyes closed, he couldn’t catch the
scent of a single feather or puff of fur. One gas station looked open for
business, but the lights were off inside, and the others looked like they had
been closed for months. Horror gripped his stomach as they rode through the
business section of town and saw that not only were the main malls closed and
vacated, half of their structures had been pulled or knocked down. There was
such a profound sense of wrongness about everything that even the warm hum of
the engine didn’t do much to mask how quiet it was, and he felt bile start to
rise in his throat. What is this? What’s happened? It looks like a ghost town.

“Flax,” Evan said
suddenly, breaking him out of his trance. Charlie jumped at the sound of his
last name and turned toward the other man, who was holding the now half-full
water bottle the driver had offered each of them.

“What’s up?” Charlie
asked. The next second he noticed that Evan’s posture had changed— it was ever
so slightly, and the human driver almost certainly didn’t notice it, but it was
there. His spine was more rigid, but his eyes were darting around the vehicle
behind the dark lenses of his shades. He lowered his voice when he spoke so
that it wouldn’t register to the driver’s ears.

“We’re being
followed,” Evan said casually. “Black sedan with no plates. Big Native American
guy driving who kinda looks like your wife’s brother, and a squat looking white
guy in the passenger seat. I saw one of them pat a weapon on the ceiling roof
to secure it. They’re not human.” His words came blunt and fast, and Charlie
knew his military training was kicking in.

Charlie flicked his
eyes to the rearview mirror of the van, pouring all of his energy into focusing
his gaze on the two figures behind them. After a moment, he saw that Evan was
right; a brown-skinned man with thick knuckles was piloting the car, and his
small blonde friend was trying far too hard to look relaxed in the seat.

“Damn,” Charlie said
under his breath. “They’re lions.”

“Thought so,” Evan
said, and even though his words were slow and steady, Charlie knew his pulse
had just accelerated. The city had somehow been closed down, their people were
being terrorized, and now two strange lions were on their tail. After another
second, the car dropped back and turned a corner, but both of the lions in the
shuttle knew it was out of caution. Charlie had a horrible feeling in his gut
about the likelihood of them meeting again. He sat back in his seat, willing
the van to materialize at his and Evan’s homes. He could picture Natalie now,
and the vision made his heart ache—her mane of soft, dark curls, caramel brown
eyes, and the disarming smile he saw most nights in his dreams.

“We’re here,” the
driver intoned a few minutes later. Charlie opened his eyes and saw that Evan
was already unbuckling his seatbelt and sliding his door open.

Did I doze off? he
wondered as he climbed out of the van. He slipped a twenty dollar bill into the
driver’s chubby palm and noted that he was twitchy and covered in sweat despite
the air conditioning. He pulled off before Charlie could ask him if anything
was alright, and he nearly called for him to come back. If the human could tell
something was amiss, maybe he should just grab Natalie and pay him to keep
driving until they hit the other side of the country.

Instead, Charlie
nodded to Evan at the foot of his own driveway and turned to the Reynolds’
home, finally glancing at the burned-out husk his pridemate and neighbor’s
garage had become. “Ariel really didn’t say anything about it?”

Evan shook his head,
his dark eyes unreadable behind his lenses. “Not a thing. Mentioned having to
move the car. And she never mentioned our niece getting…hurt.” Evan’s clipped
tone hid the grief in that single word, and Charlie felt a wrench of pain deep
inside his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” he said
softy, holding one upturned palm toward his best friend’s jaw. For a moment, he
was afraid the lion would turn away from the gesture, but then Evan stepped
forward and bumped his cheek against Charlie’s palm, accepting the comfort he
sorely needed.

“Thanks,” he said,
his voice filled with pain. “I should get inside. I have a feeling I’ll see you
soon?”

Charlie nodded,
gazing toward the living room window of his house. “Yeah. We’ll all be seeing
each other soon, I think. “

Evan flashed him a
wide smile before he turned toward his house, and it was vicious, dark, and
wrapped in a layer of red-hot shifter energy that Charlie would have flinched
away from if he hadn’t been positive it wasn’t for him.  A shiver rolled down
his spine as he watched Evan’s slim, muscle-heavy form slink toward his front
door; his best friend reminded him pretty often that he should be thankful he
was one of the good guys.

Charlie’s heart was
slamming against his ribcage as he walked swiftly up his driveway, noticing
that the curtains had been pulled shut the whole time and hadn’t moved when the
shuttle pulled up. The truck wasn’t outside at all, and Charlie worried briefly
that Natalie wasn’t home—then the anxiety bled away, and he realized he was
feeling relief at the possibility that Nat was already far away from the
potentially dangerous storm brewing for them on the horizon. He hesitated as he
slipped his key into the door, tension knotting his heavy bicep before turning
the handle and pushing the thick oak door inward and stepping inside, closing
it almost as quickly as he’d opened it.

“Nat?”

His voice echoed
uncomfortably in the house, and the terse syllable hit his ears with the force
of a gunshot. Something wasn’t right; as his eyes adjusted to the artificial
darkness the blackout curtains provided, he realized that all the furniture in
their wide living room was covered in a thick layer of dust. There were clear
footprints crossing the dust on the wood floor, and some of the dirt seemed
like it had been pushed around recently, but no weight had been put on the
sofa, recliner, or coffee table for weeks. He called her name again and dropped
his duffle bag as he crossed through the living room, shouldering through the
swinging doors leading into the kitchen so fast he’d already zipped through the
dining room by the time they swung closed again. The linoleum near the stove
showed signs of foot traffic, and there was still a worn mat near the fridge,
but otherwise, everything was bare and untouched. The chairs in the dining room
were shoved under the table, and there was nothing in the cupboards. He spoke
again, projecting his voice through the house without caring if any of the
neighbors heard his panicked screech.

“Natalie!”

A solid thunk sounded
below his feet, and Charlie froze, his breath coming hard and fast on the heels
of a wave of anxiety. It sounded like someone slamming wood onto the earth
beneath the floorboards. How?

“Nat?” He shouted
again, feeling confusion start to mingle with the terror in his chest. Then the
thunk came again, and this time, he saw a floorboard in the dining room fly a foot
into the air near table before crashing back into place.

What the fuck?

Charlie dropped to
his hands and knees and scrambled over to the section of floor, pressing his
nose to the heavy piece of wood that he could now see was far cleaner than the
rest of the space. He could smell chilly, stale air wafting up through the
crack, and if he concentrated, he could hear the rattle of what had to be their
old air conditioner pumping out a cool breeze. Charlie inhaled, filling his
powerful lungs with as many particles as he could drag through his nose— and
thought he caught a whiff of sharp, sweet smoke mixed in with the damp earth.

“Natalie,” Charlie
murmured, and the board flew up again—but this time, he caught it with both
hands and finally saw that it was a trapdoor with hinges buried in the wood. He
propped it open and peered down as a dark brown ladder rose a few inches above
the five-by-five foot opening, trying to see down into the room that had to be
twenty feet underground. His eyes adjusted quickly, and he finally saw her—bags
under her warm brown eyes, lips cracked, arms skinnier than they should have
been, but beaming that soul-cracking smile that was all for him. She stepped
back as he launched himself down the ladder, swinging the door shut above them
and plunging them into darkness as a consequence.

“Sorry!” Charlie
yelped, and he felt his hands brush across his wife’s knuckles as she scrambled
to turn on a lamp. His heart caught in his throat, and the startled look on
Natalie’s face when the lamp flared to life told him he was already tearing up.
One of her hands went to her round belly as she stepped forward and extended
the other, and Charlie placed his large, callused hand on top of hers as he
pressed his jaw against the warmth of her smaller palm. She smiled at him as he
turned his face inward to kiss her hand, and it lit up her tired features.
Natalie was a foot shorter than Charlie, so she had to crane her neck and
stretch to reach his face, but when she kissed him, he felt every shred of anxiety
and darkness melt away from his body at once. He slipped both of his hands to
her hips as she rubbed the nape of his neck, and a crackle of warm electricity
surrounded their bodies as the energy of their beasts mingled together. When he
pulled back, her tawny cheeks were flushed pink, and she was breathing hard; he
pulled one of her soft brown curls with his fingers as he looked around.

“So,” he said,
feigning an air of detachment. “Do you come here often?”

The laughter that
poured from Natalie’s lips went a long way to loosen the death grip that fear
had around his throat, and he finally got a good look at the room they were
standing in. It was much larger than he first realized, with several moth-eaten
partitions blocking parts of the room from view. It was eight feet long at
least, and about half as wide—most of the front of their house must be above
them. Though the floor was purely made of earth, there were wide plastic
circles covering much of its surface, and the walls had been lined with a slick,
shiny material.

“Steel,” Natalie
explained. “We’re soundproof, fireproof and stormproof, and we could seal up
that door as soon as we need to, easily, with the material left over.”

“Nat…how did you make
this?” Charlie asked, his voice soft with wonder. He kept Natalie’s small hand
in his as he walked over to the partitions to see a full-sized mattress and a
small, hand-built end table holding an electric lamp and a jar of water.
Further beyond, the other partition revealed a cement floor with a drain in its
center and a wide shower head jutting from the wall, about six feet above it. A
simple knob controlled the water, and a plain porcelain toilet was located
uncomfortably close to a jet black sink made from a single chunk of onyx.

“Ariel made that,”
Natalie said nervously, answering Charlie’s unspoken question. “And you can
probably see the kitchen sink is made of the same material.” She put a hand on
her lower back as she gestured to the end of the room, where a small electric
stove stood opposite another square-ish black sink, though this one was larger
than its partner. Each part of the room had at least one lamp, and there was a
set of cabinets at either side. The end with the trap door also had a huge
green chest against one wall that he knew normally sat in their garage and held
emergency supplies; he walked over to it and lifted the heavy lid, confirming
that it was filled with gauze, emergency blankets, medicine, and smaller
bundles of first aid materials. Charlie was impressed that Natalie got it down
here alone. Then something she’d said earlier stirred in his mind, and he
turned to his wife, whose heart-shaped face was pinched with apprehension and a
hint of impatience.

“You said Ariel made
these sinks?” Charlie asked, and his voice was as dumbfounded as he felt. When
did this happen? How could she hide this from me? What the fuck is going on?

Natalie nodded, and
her brown eyes were guarded. “For her side, too,” she said slowly, and Charlie
could tell she wasn’t happy with his decidedly mixed reaction.

“Her side?” he
repeated numbly. “So…Ariel has a secret fallout bunker dug out underneath her
house, as well? Just something you lionesses cooked up?” Charlie couldn’t keep
the anger and condescension out of his tone, and his wife took note.