What... Wasn’t that surprising?
He punched in a code on the sleek, black, high-tech keypad, after which he laid his thumb against a small scanner. Very Mission Impossible.
Then, much to my amazement, one wall of rock—which turned out to be a well-constructed rock facade—opened noiselessly, as though on a thick, well-oiled metal hinge. If I’d had to guess, I would have said it measured around six feet tall and three feet wide. Its edges were camouflaged by the actual rock crevices surrounding it. I was speechless, which I had to admit was rare for me.
What was behind door number one? The mouth of a deeper, darker cave was revealed. Ryder ducked into it briefly with his flashlight, taking a quick look around. All must have been well, because he went and moved the boulder back into place to hide the control panel once again.
“Okay. We’re ready. I need to push the bike in.” Ryder had rejoined me. Again, there was a pause in his actions. Concern? Uncertainty? I couldn’t tell. What I did note was that the longer we stood out there, the more tense he seemed to become—as evidenced by the clenching of his jaw and the deepening crease between his eyebrows—for reasons unknown.
“Are you going to push the bike in?” I asked hesitantly.
There was a hint of vulnerability to his face that quieted my smart-ass self. He stared down at the ground a moment longer. Stranger and stranger. A mystery presented itself. Did he not want me to see the clubhouse? Were there girly mags on the walls? Porn strewn about? Was I about to learn more about Ryder than he was comfortable with?
Before I could ask, he turned away.
“What the hell am I doing?” I thought I heard him mutter as he grabbed the handlebars on the bike.
I cocked my head, considering his behavior, as I observed him. It was kind of funny. The more reluctant he seemed about showing me around his man cave, the more excited I was to go in. What secrets was he hiding? What in the world could be making him so uncomfortable?
It took a few moments to push the bike through the cave opening, since he had to physically muscle the machine over a few of the outward-jutting rock groupings. Then he was striding purposefully back to me, slightly out of breath. The uncertainty was gone, replaced by a set expression. Clearly, he was determined to see this through.
“Grab on.”
I arched an inquisitive eyebrow. “Are you going to carry me in?”
“Yeah. I don’t want you to trip in those shoes,” he said, nodding briefly toward my feet. “The ground’s uneven.”
He picked me up in his strong arms, and in the spirit of being helpful, I looped mine around his neck, trying to make it easier on him. In no way was I trying to enjoy more of his personal scent by resting my head near his neck and taking a deep breath. Absolutely not. Okay. Maybe that was the case a little bit.
“You distract me, lin’de,” he murmured. He gave me a gentle squeeze, reminding me that he was listening.
“It’s only fair,” I grumbled. Recognizing that mental privacy was oftentimes a good thing, I built up my elaborate mental brick wall. That way I could ogle him to my heart’s content without feeling like I had to censor my thoughts. It was hard getting used to this mind-reading stuff. Heat crept up my neck as I did a quick inventory of my most recent thoughts, wondering if I’d revealed anything I shouldn’t have.
Then I had to pay attention to what he was doing, because that same jumping and balancing on rocks he’d done before, he was doing again, now holding me. I had nothing to worry about. We got to the cave opening without even a bobble. Very impressive. Trying not to bang me into the doorway of the cave, he turned sideways. Delicately, he maneuvered me until we were in a small cavern that was only dimly visible in the light coming through the opening of the cave.
“I’m going to set you down here.” He slowly lowered me, making sure I was secure before stepping away. The air was cooler, damp.
“How much does someone have to try to listen, and how much is just free flow if someone isn’t using mental barriers?” I asked.
“Depends on different variables. Most of the time, you’ll encounter white noise in someone’s mind, a mix of thoughts and feelings happening simultaneously. Picking through them is exhausting and time-consuming if you’re looking for specific information, but if a person is focused on one thought, it often jumps out clearly.”
“Why can I hear your thoughts? Why can I hear anyone’s thoughts?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe being near me is giving you enough exposure.”
With his hand outstretched, I realized he wanted the small black box he’d given me when we arrived and handed it over. While he fooled around at another keypad of sorts deeper in the cave, I thought about what he was saying.
So I wasn’t going nuts. It seemed as though I really could hear thoughts. I’d been edging my way toward believing but hadn’t wanted to fully commit to the idea. Hearing Ryder confirm the ability as something commonplace was giving me confidence. This was definitely going to require some exploration. That could be fun.
“Ryder Langston.” Ryder said his name in the darkness just ahead of me, along with a series of numbers. He seemed to be talking into another keypad in the wall, and that prompted the faux-rock panel we had just entered through to move back into place, cutting off the outside light completely. I’d never experienced such dark darkness before—and yes, hearing myself say this even in my own mind sounded moronic, but there you have it. There was absolutely no source of light anywhere. I couldn’t see my hand in front of me.
“Uh...Ryder? What are we doing?” I asked.
“We have high levels of security here.” His voice came out of the darkness, and I almost jumped when I felt his hand touch my waist.
Vibrant blue light appeared in the rock a foot away. It formed a two-foot-thick archway between us and the next room in the cavern. It was powerful. It was beautiful. It was otherworldly and mesmerizing. I was enchanted. It lit up the interior of the cavern.
Ryder ran his hands over my shoulders, his eyes focused intently on my face. There was a thrum of energy coming from him that I could almost touch. It reminded me of the feeling of static, only multiplied.
“Are you ready to blow your mind?”
“Sure?” I answered with a question, because now I was getting nervous again. We were in the dark, in a cave, in the middle of nowhere, and I had just been attacked. Instead of immediately calling the police, I had agreed to go with Ryder.
I shook my head. This was either going to be a really good or really bad idea. My gut instinct was telling me to go with it, and it hadn’t steered me wrong yet. This was not logical, but I felt as though I was a part of whatever was happening in some weird, fateful, fatalistic way.
“Trust me,” he repeated quietly, his strong, deep voice caressing me intimately in the vibrant blue light, his eyes making dark promises. I forgot to breathe for a moment and felt my heart pounding fiercely.
Catching my breath, I answered, “I do.”
“I’ve never brought anyone with me before,” he explained with a fierce, searching look.
A flare of satisfaction pulsed as I mentally committed myself to whatever was about to happen.
“It’s going to feel strange.”
“Strange?”
“Hold on to me. Tightly,” he warned roughly. “Don’t let go, no matter what, until I tell you to.”
“You’re making me nervous.” I quirked a lip up, but found myself losing the expression immediately.
“You’re going to be fine. I promise.”
He picked me up, enveloping me with his size and warmth, and I grabbed hold around his neck once again, our faces only inches apart. He stared down at me in the semidarkness. His piercing eyes softened as they studied my features in the strange light. I had the feeling he didn’t show this side to many other people.
As though unable to help himself, he placed a warm, soft kiss on my lips that lingered and made my blood thicken. Then he took one step, which put us in the archway. His head was thrown back, exposing his muscular neck, his eyes closed and deeply focused. He tightened his grip almost painfully on me and stepped through the opening.
A powerful tingling sensation attacked me. A violent lightheadedness enveloped me. I was squeezed, feeling my blood pounding almost painfully hard. Compressed, the air was forcefully pulled from my lungs, and I had a sudden sense of free fall. My stomach dropped, and I couldn’t get any air to even scream. All I could do was hold on tight. Not let go.
Then it was over.
Complete darkness crept over us. The brilliant blue light faded incrementally, until once again not a hint of that brilliant illumination entered the space. All I could perceive was the feel of Ryder’s skin, though it was now clammy and cold. As was mine.
“What was that?” I croaked.
“It’s okay,” he murmured on a deep breath. “Hold on. I’ll get a light.” He stepped away, his heavy boots slowly shuffling in the darkness. A few seconds later, a soft luminescence gently touched our immediate space. I saw him standing in front of a set of secured cabinets.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I think so. What just happened?”
“It was a form of travel. We call it a mylunate transfer. This is my transfer room.”
“Travel? What do you mean? I felt like I was in a blender.”
“Been in a blender, have you?” One side of his mouth quirked into a sexy half grin, which zinged me unexpectedly, sparking a feeling of tenderness which I knew was dangerous for me in a whole other way. I knew he was trying to put me at ease, but I immediately recoiled from it. “Look who’s being snarky,” I replied lightly.
It appeared that I was in a stone room. The walls, the floor, the ceiling—all made of some kind of smooth rock which was a gorgeous, vibrant blue. The room was small, maybe half the size of my bedroom, but there were no windows, which made it feel even smaller, like a large walk-in closet.
Cabinets made of some kind of dark wood took up wall space directly behind Ryder, but they also had thick metal bars over them, protecting whatever was inside. Was there something dangerous or something secret in there?
“Holy smokes, Batman! Is this your super-secret weapons lab that no one else knows about?” I said this jokingly as I walked around the room, checking things out. I threw a smile over my shoulder, but Ryder watched pensively from a few feet away. “Taylor, you should lay off the TV for a while.”
“The TV was my babysitter,” I replied absently.
I noticed the source of the soft light appeared to be some kind of large, glowing rock in the middle of a glass wall sconce, which was absolutely strange, and I lost my train of thought. “How does that work?”
“Trinium is a naturally occurring ore. When you shave pieces off it, the energy from separation produces the light as a by-product.”
“Wow. Are you kidding me? Light that doesn’t have to use electricity? The Edison Company will flip out over this. Can this be channeled into appliances?”
We were in his lab. That had to be it. He had a secret lab in the middle of nowhere because he was developing this really cool “green” technology that all the big corporate energy producers would do their best to sabotage, given the chance.
“Yeah. It’s how we power most everything here. Let me show you the rest.” He went to a section of wall that had another of those slick black-box keypads. “It’s not summer here right now. We need clothes and heat. I haven’t been here for a while.”
That just didn’t make sense. “How can it not be summer here?” He had to be speaking metaphorically.
“Be patient.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that, but what is this place?”
“My home.”
“But I thought you lived—”
“Be patient,” he repeated briskly. “I’ll answer all of your questions.”
It truly must be appreciated that I held my tongue, which was really hard for me.
We’d just walked through some weird psychedelic door in the canyons by Malibu, and now we were in his cave house with glowing rocks? That begged for explanation, didn’t it?
Then he pushed open a hidden panel that led out of the room. A bit paranoid were we?
It was then I realized I was shivering. I followed him through the hidden panel in the blue stone wall, which I would have been more intrigued by if I hadn’t been losing my body heat so quickly. The air was really cold, like snow-on-the-ground cold where crisp air filled your lungs and you stopped being able to feel the tip of your nose. I did need more clothing. Was this just a factor of being underground? I knew that underground caves could stay pretty chilly year-round. Were we in the canyon wall?
As we stepped into another darkened room, I decided that electricity had its place. There was something to be said for being able to flip a switch on the wall and have everything brighten up. Ryder pushed the wall panel back into place behind me and continued ahead. Within a few moments, soft lighting flared from yet another trinium rock, bringing the room to life where I stood. Holy cow, those were a lot of books! Two perpendicular walls were full of them, and they were stuffed in bookshelves and stacked in piles on the floor beside the shelving as well as on side tables around the seating area.
“Like to read much?” I arched an eyebrow at him.
“When I have time,” he stated. “Quarantine doesn’t allow for much else.”
Quarantine?
Ryder had created light with those strange rocks in a vase across the room. I noted the artistry of both vases, which flanked the seating area. They were made of softly tinted swirls of yellow and orange, the light from the trinium filtering through the colored glass making the room warm and welcoming.
“Those vases are beautiful.”
“My sister made them.”
I briefly wondered if this was the same sister he’d mentioned earlier who’d been somehow hurt.
The walls were of the same smooth stone as the room I’d just left, beautifully deep blue, buffed to a smooth polish. The floor under my feet and the ceiling all around was of the same stone, and I realized the room was literally cavelike, but luxurious at the same time. It was amazing.
“Who knew that Malibu had such beautiful underground stonework?” I said admiringly. “Better hope this doesn’t go public or you’ll have every pseudocelebrity suddenly wanting a cave home in the Malibu canyons. This is really lovely.”
“Things aren’t always what they seem, Taylor. We aren’t underground.”
“What does that mean?” When I gave him a questioning look, clearly a what-are-you-talking-about-would-you-care-to-expand look, Ryder narrowed his eyes, but he kept his lips pressed in a thin line. There was something he wanted to say, but he wasn’t saying it yet. Why?
With a mental shrug, I figured he’d get to it when he was ready.
The stone floor had two small, naturally formed steps that rose four inches or so each. These led to the slightly upraised living area where, in masculine tones, there were comfortable furnishings: a couch, armchairs, a coffee table and what looked like a supersoft, thick, furry rug.
Then I caught sight of the real showstopper.
The wall opposite the sofa was made entirely of glass, allowing me to look out and see the somewhat strange ambient light that was illuminating the outdoor surroundings. How could there be a glass window in an underground cave? My sense of direction told me I was supposed to be underground, but here was a window looking out aboveground.
The sky was dark, but not fully, which was my first clue that something really strange and surreal was happening. Why in the world was it dark already? It wasn’t supposed to get dark for hours yet.
It couldn’t be more than four in the afternoon at most. I’d had lunch just a couple of hours ago.
“Wow. Great window,” I murmured, rubbing my arms more rigorously to warm them.
I walked up the two stone stairs cautiously and ambled toward the window, needing to see, at the same time that the cold fingers of panic tripped up my spine. I had a fleeting moment in which I marveled at the way my shoes seemed to sink into the soft, carpetlike flooring, absently thinking that I’d never seen or walked on anything like it in my life, but just as quickly my attention was drawn back to the window.
Though it was clearly nighttime, there was still a lot of some kind of light giving shape to foliage below. It was enough that I clearly saw I wasn’t just not below ground; I was a few hundred feet up. I also noted that a Jurassic-age-like rainforest was right outside the window.
A few of the treetops actually reached the height of the window I was looking out of, and beyond that, a valley stretched far and wide. There were no city lights in the distance as I looked out. There was no ocean.
What...was going on?
There was nothing like this in Malibu. There was nothing like this in Southern California. How... What... Where... I didn’t even know what question to formulate. My brain was in such a sensory jumble, I couldn’t put a full thought together. The puzzle pieces were all oddly shaped and didn’t fit each other.
“Ryder?” His name whispered across my lips in confusion.
I looked up at the sky and gasped. There were two moons. Two. One of the moons was off to my right, low in the sky and looking very big—way larger than normal—whole and bright, while the other was up high to the left, looking smaller and crescent shaped.
“Two moons,” I whispered. My alarm blared. My blood pressure blew. My heart suddenly pounded triple time. No wonder there was so much light. Enough that I could see that I was nowhere I’d ever been before. I was having trouble pulling in air. “Ryder, there are two moons.” My voice was hoarse. I couldn’t take my eyes off the sky.
“Breathe, Taylor. Take it easy.” He was suddenly in front of me, his hands on my shoulders, trying to block my sight, but I was transfixed.
Quicksilver Dreams (Dreamwalkers) Page 15
