by Keri Arthur
The scent of the sea was thicker on the wind now, drawing me on, making it difficult not to run. I kept my pace even, trying to ignore the tingles down my spine, the feeling that at any moment, his fat fingers would be on my neck, squeezing tight.
I shivered and ran across the road. Another turn, and the sea was suddenly visible—a thick blue line that had my soul breathing a sigh of relief.
But I wasn’t safe yet. Not by a long shot.
I walked on, hoping I had the time, hoping the man behind me wouldn’t risk getting too near until we were all but alone.
But there weren’t many people on the beach. Just a handful of joggers and a couple of swimmers brave enough to risk the chill of the water. I stepped onto the sand, the grit of it harsh against my toes. After stripping off my pants and sweatshirt, I strode toward the water. When I was near enough, I dropped the bag and placed my clothes on top. It wouldn’t stop a thief, but I could only hope there were few of them around at this hour. Not that I had much to steal—just some cash, a stolen credit card, and a borrowed cell phone. None of which I could actually afford to lose.
Fingers of sea foam reached for my toes as I neared the water, running across my skin, their touch cold and somehow comforting. I strode on, my heart in my mouth, my nose filled with the twin scents of sea and pepper.
He was near. So near.
Despite the iciness of air and water, sweat began dribbling down my spine, soaking through in coin-sized patches on my T-shirt. It was all I could do to hold my pace, to not panic.
The water reached my knees, moved up to my thighs. Safety was close, so close. I let my fingers trail in the water, feeling for the energy running underneath the waves. It danced around my fingertips, little sparks of electricity no one else would ever feel, let alone see. I closed my eyes briefly and called it to me.
And then I heard it. The soft click of a gun’s safety being disengaged.
“Stop,” he said. His voice was guttural with an accent I’d never been able to place. “Don’t move any farther into the sea.”
I had no doubt he’d shoot, and that knowledge was powerful enough to not only halt my steps, but to have my heart leaping up into the vicinity of my throat. But I hadn’t come all this way to let him catch me so easily. The sea was my home, the one place where I could fight him, and I’d be damned if I’d let him take me here. I bit my lip and forced myself to keep moving.
Are you totally insane? part of me screamed. Probably. But in many respects, I’d rather be dead than go back to those cells. And if he did kill me, at least the sea would protect my body. She would whisk it away so it could never be used by those men.
But I had no intentions of being killed today. Not by this man. Not if I could help it.
I heard a click—a sound so faint he was obviously using a silencer. Felt the vibration of the shot run across the air, across my skin.
I dove sideways.
I wasn’t fast enough to avoid the bullet—not that I really expected to be.
The metal tore through skin and muscle before blasting its way back out of my shoulder—the same damn shoulder as before. The water went red and pain rolled through me, flooding my body, making it difficult to concentrate. But I battled the darkness threatening to swamp my senses. If I gave in to the call of unconsciousness, I would be his.
So I called to the energy of the sea and let it fill me. It raced through my muscles, energizing and renewing. Giving me the strength I needed to fight. I dove deep, keeping low and close to the sandy bottom, swimming out to deeper waters. But not too deep. I needed to draw him out.
Needed him to feel safe while doing so.
And for that, he’d need his feet on the bottom. He knew how well I could swim, so he’d neither risk going too deep nor bother shifting shape. Air dragons couldn’t breathe underwater like we could, and it was harder for them to take off from deeper water—there wasn’t enough room for the full sweep of their wings. Besides, while the beach wasn’t packed, there were still people about, and if there was one thing the scientists were fanatical about, it was not revealing our presence. Marsten didn’t want to share the glory with anyone.
It was probably the one thing he and the dragon communities would ever agree on.
When the depth was right, I headed for the light and the air. As I neared the surface, I let myself go and simply floated on the waves, as if unconscious. My arms were outstretched, my fingers in the water.
And still I called to the power of the sea and the waves, gathering it to me, letting it build, until the energy swirled around me, an unseen vortex ready to be unleashed.
For several minutes, there was no reaction from the dark-skinned man. No vibration or movement disturbing the waves rolling toward the beach.
Then I felt it. One step. Then another. Soon he was splashing through the waves, hurrying toward me. I moved my fingers slowly through the water, caressing the power, readying it.
Fingers touched my foot tentatively. Tension ran through the water, thick and heavy, as the man who held my foot braced himself against the slightest hint of movement.
I didn’t twitch.
His grip against my foot became firmer. Tentatively, he tugged me backward. The power of the sea surged against my control, as if eager to grab my assailant. I held it back, felt the anger of it roar through my body. Knew I wouldn’t be able to control it for very much longer.
His chuckle filled the air. A satisfied sound if ever I’d heard one. So I flicked my fingers wide, unleashing the vortex. It swirled past, sending me spinning, and hit the dark-skinned man hard, sucking him down into the ocean.
I flipped around, taking a breath of air, then ducked under the water. The hunter was spinning under the surface, held there by the vortex. Even if he changed, it wouldn’t have helped. The vortex was too strong, too powerful, and would have ripped his wings to pieces. Besides, shifting shape wasn’t an instantaneous thing, and he probably would have drowned in the process. The fear etched on his face suggested he knew that.
I spread my hands wide, flicking my fingers toward the surface, raising the vortex and allowing him to grab a breath before yanking him back down again. It was a pattern I kept as I swept him out to sea, until there was no beach, no nothing. Just ocean. Endless blue ocean.
And us.
Even then, I didn’t set him entirely free, keeping him locked within the vortex but no longer spinning. Just because I believed that dragons couldn’t take off in deep water didn’t mean that they couldn’t. It was definitely better to be safe than sorry with these bastards.
“Oh God, oh God,” he said, over and over as he fought to get free, movements panicked and almost believable.
Almost. Someone else might have bought it, but I knew what he was, and what he could do. Panic and a killer just didn’t go together.
“I know you’re a dragon, so quit the histrionics,” I said dryly. “I also know you’ll try and kill—”
I didn’t even get the sentence finished before he’d raised his hand. Fire erupted from his fingertips and burned across the waves.
I swore and ducked under the water, watching the thick flames fire past me. When they were gone, I raised a hand and yanked him deep, flinging him about like a useless bit of seaweed before pushing him back to the surface.
He spluttered and coughed, and glared at me with hateful eyes.
“Do that again, and I will kill you,” I said softly.
“How did you do this?” he asked, waving his arm angrily at the swirling water holding him captive. “They said your power comes at dawn or dusk, not during the day itself.”
I smiled. “Just goes to prove that the scientists don’t know as much about me as they think they do, doesn’t it?”
He glared at me, face pinched, eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”
I stared at him, seeing the fear buried deep behind the anger. “I want answers.”
“Or what? You’ll drown me? Go ahead. It won’t stop them coming after you.�
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“I don’t care if they come after me.” A lie, of course, but he wasn’t to know that.
“Then what do you want?”
“I want to free my mother and the kids.”
He snorted. “That will never happen. The Drumnadrochit facility has been locked up tight, and no one, not even a flame-throwing dragon, will get anywhere near the place.” He paused, and his sudden grin was malicious. “Oh, I forgot, your pet flamethrower bit the big one, didn’t he?”
Anger surged through me. I ducked under the water, grabbed his ankle, and yanked down hard. This time I pulled him deep into the dark coldness of the water, watching his struggle to hold his breath, until his face went dark and the realization he was about to drown hit him.
Only then did I push him upward and let him breathe air rather than water.
He took several long, shuddering gasps, then somehow said, “Bitch.”
“Totally. And right now, you’re relying on this bitch to survive.”
He shuddered and wiped a hand across his red, splotchy features. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about the security at Drumnadrochit.”
“It’s been upgraded since your escape. A bird can’t fart now without security knowing about it.”
“What about the loch?”
“Sensors along the shoreline.”
“The whole shoreline?”
He hesitated. “Most of it.”
He was lying. The loch was too big, too wild, for such thoroughness. They’d probably only done the area near my mother’s lands. “Infrared sensors?”
He nodded. “And movement sensors.”
“What about the security codes—do you know them?”
“It’s all handprint-coded now. Everyone working there is registered with the computer. No one else gets in without clearance from the big man himself.”
Which meant we’d been doing nothing but wasting time here in Florence. Even if we’d managed to raid the old lady’s house successfully, it wouldn’t have mattered a damn. We couldn’t slide in a new password because Marsten would have final approval, and we couldn’t use someone else’s because of the whole handprint deal.
God, we should have figured something like this would happen, but I guess Egan and I had been working blind. We weren’t security experts—even if Egan had trained in the family “business” of stealing. Security equipment had probably zoomed ahead in leaps and bounds in the ten years he’d been locked up.
“So the security net around the research center is tight? There are no gaps anywhere at all in the system?”
“None that I’m aware of.”
Crap. Of course, he could be lying his pants off, but part of me doubted it. Fear lurked in his eyes, and I really didn’t think his loyalty to the scientists ran that deep. “Tell me how you’ve been finding us so successfully.”
“Tracker.”
“Where?”
He hesitated, then said, somewhat reluctantly, “In your foot.”
“Which we pulled out last night and destroyed. So how did you find us at the hotel?”
“Luck,” he muttered.
But his eyes did a shifty little sideways flicker, telling me he was lying. Or at least, not admitting the entire truth. “I know there’s another tracker, so just tell me where.”
He didn’t say anything. I raised my fingers, entangling the full power of the ocean once again, letting it tug lightly at his feet and twist him around. Fear flashed across his sullen features.
“Okay, okay, there is another one.”
“Where?”
“In your mouth, in one of the fillings. It’s short-range microchip.”
Oh, just great. And here was me with no time and no cash to visit a dentist. Though how on earth would I explain having a tracker in my mouth? “Which tooth?”
He just smiled. “Take me back to the shore and I’ll tell you.”
“Yeah, right.” If I took him back to shore, he’d either immediately create a fuss that’d attract unwanted attention, or one of the idiots who’d been in the car with him would take a second shot at me. And this time, they might not just get a shoulder.
“You need to get help for that shoulder, you know,” he said. “Otherwise you’ll bleed to death.”
“The sea will heal it.”
He snorted. “Yeah. The sea is all powerful, all healing. That’s why I was able to catch you so easily the first time.”
The sea had nothing to do with that because I was near the loch rather than the ocean. Besides, he’d caught me so easily because I was a fool. I’d naively believed him when he said he could get me inside the research center and help me rescue my mom.
Of course, he’d kept half his word. He’d gotten me into the compound all right—and led me straight into the trap the scientists had waiting. I’d called the loch for help, but the loch was freshwater, not sea, and while waters as ancient as the loch did contain a powerful energy, it didn’t have the same sort of magic as the sea. Not for me as a half breed, anyway. She’d answered, but nowhere near quick enough. The scientists had knocked me out very quickly, and I doubted they would have even noticed a brief rise of water up the shoreline.
“Tell me the range of the microchip.”
He hesitated, then muttered, “Five hundred feet.”
“That’s not very far.”
“The other one was GPS technology. The tooth was just meant as a backup, and designed mainly for around the lab. If you got out of your cell, it was easier for them to use the short-range stuff than haul out the GPS.”
He was beginning to shiver now, his bottom lip quivering and his skin turning a paler shade. He was treading water rather than simply floating, and therefore using more body heat than necessary. He was also an air dragon, and they didn’t do well in cold conditions. Not for very long periods, anyway.
Distant vibrations of power began to lap at my skin, and the sea began whispering of an approaching powerboat. I looked over my shoulder, scanning the horizon and seeing a distant dot. Maybe someone had seen this man being dragged out.
Which meant the time for a decision was coming. I spread my fingers in the water, calling to the power, letting it play lazily around me.
“What other safety measures have been employed since we got out?”
“I’ve been here, chasing after you, so who knows?”
“How many of you are here in America?”
“Six.”
But again his eyes did that shifty little flick. I raised a hand, let the sea swirl around him a little stronger.
“Okay, okay,” he said quickly. “There’s nine.”
One had been killed in the car explosion, and I’d killed one last night. Trae had gotten rid of two others, so that left five. Four if I got rid of this one. Better odds by far, even if the thought of drowning him had a bitter taste rising in my mouth.
“And who is holding the device that tracks the microchip signal?”
“Take me to shore and I might tell you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think I’m stupid enough to believe that?”
“Then what do you intend to do?”
“What do you think I intend to do?”
He flung fire at me. This time, I stopped it with the waves. He didn’t say anything, but the fear that had stayed mostly in the background until now was etched all over his face.
The vibrations in the water were becoming stronger. I looked over my shoulder, saw the boat becoming visible on the horizon.
“Hoy!” he shouted, waving his hand wildly. “Over here!”
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said mildly, gathering the lazy net of energy.
“If that boat is ours,” he said, “you’re in deep shit. And I intend to make you pay—”
I didn’t wait for the rest of the threat, just flipped underwater and finally unleashed the dragon within.
Energy ran across my limbs—energy that twisted and changed my form, until what floated under the wat
er was long and slender, with scales that ran from the deepest green to the brightest blue. In looks, we were very close to the traditional depictions of Chinese dragons, but there were still some similarities to our winged cousins. The spiked tail and deadly claws, for instance.
With my sea body reclaimed, I unleashed the net of energy I’d been gathering and snagged his legs, dragging him deep down, past the twilight layers and into the dark and gloomy waters that never saw sunshine or surface-dwelling sea life. Down to where the worms, crustaceans, and rattail fish played. Down to where the pressure was beyond even fire dragon endurance and the air in his bloodstream expanded to the point that it blocked the flow of blood to brain and limbs. Death after that was almost instantaneous. If I had to kill, then I would kill quickly. Not that this type of death was in any way easy.
I released the energy of the sea and let his body float away on the current. The rattails would have a good feed for the next few weeks.
I flicked my tail and rose slowly toward the surface. The feel of the cold seawater slithering over my scales was sensual, making me want to wriggle in sheer pleasure. I loved my sea form, and part of me wanted to remain like this for a while. But if that boat did belong to the scientists, they might very well have the short-range receiver with them. Which meant I had two choices—destroy the boat and kill those on board, or escape.
I flipped over onto my back and swam slowly toward the vibrations of the boat. Even if they did have the tracker, I was deep enough that they wouldn’t see me. But I would see them.
The hull of the boat came into sight. I swam underneath it, then angled away until I could see who was on board. The boat was a luxurious one, so didn’t belong to Marsten’s men. Unless they’d commandeered it. Inside it were two men. One of the men held what looked to be a cell phone, but when he swung around in my direction, I realized it had to be the receiver.
I spun around and headed under the boat again. The man with the receiver was shouting for the driver to turn, which meant I was left with little option. I couldn’t let them follow me again.
