Jack studied the terrain as he carefully followed Charlie. In certain places, the floor and walls became solid rock that stretched for hundreds of feet before becoming dirt again. How much time had it taken to break through this terrain?
For a human, it would have taken years and probably some dynamite. For a vamp, Jack didn’t know but probably a couple of weeks, maybe a month. But then, if he had nothing else to do, Jack would have also occupied himself by carving through the rock to establish a safe hiding place. And then, with years of boredom facing him, he would have kept on carving, which is what Mal had done.
His gaze fell on Charlie as she walked with confidence through the tunnels. When he found Mike and Doug, he would make sure to get her off this island too. He couldn’t leave her behind to rot down here.
“Almost there,” Charlie mumbled.
And then she was stepping into a cavern. Jack followed her into the open space about a hundred feet in diameter. He braced himself as the eyes of seven others swung toward him. Five of them sat around a small fire while two others washed clothes in a bucket. There were four women and three men.
They were all paler than normal, but they looked relatively normal for people who survived underground. Jack didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but if he discovered them sitting in the corner while picking at their skin, he wouldn’t have been surprised.
As a turned vamp, he may not be able to smell a killer vampire like the purebreds could, but he could differentiate a human from a vampire as like always knew like. The olive-skinned man with black hair and black eyes sitting by the fire was a vampire, and Jack assumed it was Mal.
“Hey,” Charlie greeted, and they all nodded at her, but their eyes remained on Jack. “Everyone, this is Jack. Jack, this is Darlene, Sheila, Valerie, Lucia, Chase, Gio, and Miguel.”
Miguel was the vampire Jack assumed was Mal. Then, the shadows in the tunnel on the other side of the cavern shifted, and a tall, thin man with a hawkish nose and dark brown hair emerged from the shadows.
Mal. Jack didn’t know how he knew this was the vamp who changed Charlie, but the second he saw him, he was confident of it. Intelligence radiated from Mal’s deep brown eyes as he surveyed Jack.
He sensed Mal’s power; this vamp was older and stronger than him, yet Jack had the sudden impulse to beat Mal to a bloody pulp. Mal’s blood ran through Charlie. She wouldn’t be here if Mal hadn’t saved her, but Jack couldn’t control the unexpected jealousy flooding him while he gazed at the man.
Then, a smaller shadow stepped out from behind Mal, drawing Jack’s attention to the boy who broke into a grin before racing across the cavern at them.
“Mom!” he yelled as Charlie ran toward him.
“Dylan!” Charlie caught him when he threw himself into her arms.
Chapter Nine
Charlie wrappedher arms around Dylan and closed her eyes while she clung to his slender body. She’d refused to let her fear get the best of her since encountering Jack in the pit. She’d refused to think about the possibility she might never see him again, but now all that fear was catching up with her.
She was hugging him too tight, but he didn’t protest as he held on to her for more time than he usually would have. She was gone longer than normal, and though he would never admit it, he was afraid for her.
At nine years old, he believed himself too much of a man to show when he was scared, but she felt it in the shaking hands pressed against her back and the tremor that ran through his body before he suppressed it. Charlie crushed him more firmly against her and gulped down the lump in her throat.
He’d been trapped down here for the past three years, with far too little time in the sun and nothing that other children his age enjoyed. He could be a little shy, but before coming here, he had friends and played soccer and baseball. It was all taken from him, and after three years of living beneath the earth, with a group of adults and vampires, she was sure there would be lasting effects after they were free.
Since coming here, she’d continued to try and keep his education going, but her lack of educational tools limited things. There was only so much math someone could do with no paper and pen, never mind without calculators or computers. And with no books, there was little he could read. She wrote stories in the dirt for him to read, but it wasn’t the same.
Before coming here, she’d labored to give him a good life. She’d aspired to provide him with a far better childhood than hers and failed. Her childhood lacked love and was cruel, but at least she’d seen the sun.
Unlike her childhood, Dylan was loved and cherished beyond measure, but he was missing out on so much of his life. She would give anything and do whatever it took to free him from this island.
Jack glanced between Charlie and her son as he hid his astonishment over the revelation she had a child. Dylan was human; changing him into a vampire at his age would be cruel. Purebred vampire babies aged until they reached maturity; turned, human children never aged again.
Was he really her son or had she adopted him?
Then Dylan lifted his head from Charlie’s shoulder and his one blue eye, and one green eye landed on Jack. Those eyes were nearly identical in color to his mother’s and just as piercing, except that direct stare was more unnerving from a child. His tousled brown hair framed a face rounder than Charlie’s; Dylan had her eyes and hair, but his features were someone else’s.
Where is his father?Is he still alive? Is he waiting for them to come home?Jack’s nails bit into his palms as he tried to bury his jealousy over the possibility.
“Who’s he?” Dylan asked.
“Manners,” Charlie reminded him.
Color flushed Dylan’s cheeks, but his body remained stiff against hers as he surveyed Jack.
“This is Jack.” Charlie turned her head toward Jack. “And this is my son, Dylan.”
