“Cole.” I swung one leg over his side, then the other, until I faced down his back. “Don’t kill him. He didn’t mean anything by it. He was joking.”
“This is awesommme.” Rixton held his arms over his head like he was on a rollercoaster. “Woooohoooo!”
Scooping hair from my eyes, I drank in the sight of him acting a fool and wished Sherry was here to kick his ass for me.
“I changed my mind. Drop him.” I scowled at my former partner. “Maybe impact will knock sense into him. A normal person isn’t this accepting of the supernatural. They don’t jump on the backs of dragons and fly off into the sunset willingly.”
Talons scratched lightly at my boot to get my attention.
“I’m charun. Half charun. I don’t know. I’m something not entirely human.” And I hadn’t adapted as well or as fast as Rixton. Though, to be fair, he hadn’t also learned he was a demon, and he didn’t yet know which demon I embodied. Plus, he had only glimpsed Thom, the most adorable among us, and Cole, the most majestic. Let him see Drosera, or worse — Iniid. Then we’d talk. “He’s Grade A human, and he’s having the time of his life.”
In response to my mood, Cole dialed it down a notch. He turned us around in a slow arc and glided back to Rixton’s vehicle where he landed gentler than ever. He kept Rixton aloft until the last minute then set him on his feet. Cranking his head around to see me, Cole breathed warm air in my face. I rested my forehead against his and puffed out my cheeks in a calming exhale.
All I could do was pray this was enough, that knowing the truth would satisfy Rixton. I might be recruiting, but I didn’t want to draft him. Not for this. Never for this.
“Sherry is never going to believe this.” Rixton jogged up to me. “She’s going to think I’ve lost my final marble.”
“You’re positive you want to tell her?” I had to try to make him see reason. “Thom and Cole are the cute ones. The charun beauty scale tips after them. Fast. Trust me.”
“I can handle it,” he insisted. “So can she. She might look all sexy and maternal, but she’s one hundred percent momma bear. She can rip and tear with the best of them. She’ll want to know, and I’m going to tell her.”
A fresh rush of temper had me sliding off Cole’s back. I hit the ground, and he arched a ridged brow at me, sensing what I intended to do. The dragon had always known me better than I knew myself.
“Can she handle this too?” I flung out my arms. “Can you?”
In a burning rush fueled by my pissedoffedness, I gave myself over to my inner dragon to make a point.
Cole rumbled an intrigued sound, and it occurred to me that we had never been dragons at the same time. I was so caught up in doing that math, when he butted his head against mine, I wasn’t thinking clearly, and I … purred at him. Like a freaking cat.
Wasting no time, Cole tangled his tail with mine, knotting us together, and leaned his side against me.
“You’re not going to have wild dragon sex, right?” Rixton was recovering from his shock, but he rambled as his brain fought for traction. “You said you don’t have sex with him when he’s a dragon, but I didn’t ask if you have sex when you’re both dragons. And if you did have sex, and you got pregnant, would you lay an egg? Eggs? Or would you give birth? Are dragon babies born human or dragon?”
A groan rumbled through my elongated throat that earned me a chuff of amusement from Cole. Easing back, he released his hold on his true form and became a man again. The gesture was clearly a cautionary one. Maybe he worried I would get frustrated and eat Rixton. I had, to date, always eaten someone — or part of someone — when I shifted. This would be the first time I managed to use my manners. Hopefully. Assuming I could flip the switch in the opposite direction.
After a few tense seconds, focusing on my identity, repeating my name like a mantra, did the trick.
Luce Boudreau. Luce Boudreau. Luce Boudreau.
A persistent tug in my gut twisted, turned me inside out, and my essence slid into its more compact form.
Breathing hard, I readjusted to balancing on two feet instead of four, shaking off Cole when he offered to steady me until the acidic churn in my stomach eased to a bearable level.
Apparently shifting caused indigestion. No wonder the dragon always wanted a snack between changes.
“Sorry.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “That was uncalled for.”
“Do you eat people?” Rixton was bright-eyed and fully recovered by the time I adjusted to the limitations of being human. “Do we taste like chicken?” His brow puckered. “Hmm. Is it still cannibalism since you’re not technically human?”
“I have eaten people,” I admitted, “but they deserved it.”
I chose not to dwell on the flavor.
“Humans don’t taste like chicken,” Cole added, still amused. “Chicken is a lean meat. Humans are fattier. The taste is richer, but not gamey.”
A surprised laugh shot out of me, and I met his gaze. “You’re not serious.”
“I’ve eaten more humans than you, and I made the conscious decision to do so.” His lips quirked up at the corners, his smiles coming easier these days. “Plus, I have a more refined palate than you, considering the variety of meats I’ve consumed over the years.”
“I’ll award the point.” God knows his dietary options hadn’t been limited to pork, chicken, fish, or human until this world. “Rixton, you see what I mean? You want this? Not just for you, but for your family?”
As if remembering his wild ride, he swept his gaze over Cole. “What little boy doesn’t want a pet dragon?”
The snarl that ripped out of Cole wiped the happy right off Rixton’s face.
Conquest had enslaved Cole, and many other races and species. A human joking about leashing him was bound to be triggering.
“He was joking.” I joined Cole and stroked a hand up and down his back until he calmed. “No one owns you, and no one ever will again.”
Whatever ownership rights I had inherited from Conquest, I would find a way to forfeit once the small matter of surviving Ezra was behind us. Going forward? Assuming there was a future for us, he would always be free to make his own choices. I owed him that much, and I would pay it out of my own hide if that was the cost.
A hard glint crushed the boyish excitement on Rixton’s face from a moment earlier. “What asshole thought they should own a dragon?”
“Me,” I said softly, and I was grateful when his human ears didn’t catch the admission.
CHAPTER FIVE
Farhan drummed his fingers on his battered desktop. No matter how hard he stared at the phone, it didn’t ring. It didn’t do a damn thing but sit on the blotter and mock him. The same as it had every one of the last seven days.
Adam wasn’t going to call and set up a meeting between himself, Luce, and his father. He wasn’t an idiot.
When his father had strolled into Farhan’s office last week and demanded just that, he knew the shit was about to hit the fan. When Ezra spouted the location of the enclave, the outpost where Wu’s bloodline lived in secrecy, he retracted his previous thought.
The shit wasn’t about to hit, it already had. They were just in too deep for the blades to spin.
Adam had known this day would come, and it had finally arrived. Only his centuries of prep work had kept the enclave one step ahead of his father, but the guy had long strides. It wouldn’t take him long to catch up once he got mad enough, and discovering the enclave had evacuated their warehouse before he got there was just the kind of insult that would nudge him to pick up the pace.
His thumb was swiping the green circle, the screen pressed against his cheek, before he registered the phone had rung. “Kapoor.”
Adam came across cool as a cucumber, but then he hadn’t been in the same room with Ezra in memory. “Has Father contacted you again?”
“Yeah. He’s called twice for status reports. Rumors of Luce’s little army are running rampant, and he wants them squashed. Both the rumors, and t
he army.” Farhan’s chewed-ragged fingernails tapered into claws and left fresh pinpricks among a sea of others nicking the finish. That was the problem in a nutshell. Luce’s army. Not Conquest’s. Not an ancient idol resurfacing, but a new icon rising. “I’ve put him off as long as I can. He expects you to meet with him, in person, with Luce as your plus one.”
“He’ll kill her.”
“I know.” Better her than him, or them for that matter.
“She’s our one chance to end this. I can’t waste her life.”
“He’s not going to keep taking no for an answer. He’s already pissed the enclave evaded him.” Farhan sighed. “Does he know? About you and Luce?”
“I’m not dead, am I?”
“No,” he allowed, “but I doubt Ezra lets you off the hook that easy. He’s going to want you to wish you were dead, not reward you with a peaceful send off. That means he’s going to keep hounding the enclave, even if you manage to get them out of this scrape, and he won’t rest until he wipes them off the map.”
The door swung open, and the blood drained from Farhan’s cheeks in a stinging rush.
One in-person visit from Ezra was … not good, but survivable. It told you that you were in trouble. Big trouble. But if you still had a pulse afterward, you had some value to him. Two visits? That meant your trouble outweighed your worth, and he had come to rectify his previous lapse in judgement with something a little more final than a slap on the wrist.
“I have to go.” He ended the call before Adam got a preview of coming attractions. He might not be able to buy his friend much time, but he could make it a few days. Maybe. In all the years he’d spent testing others’ resistance to his methods, he had never had them turned on himself. Perhaps this was karma.
“Adam refuses your invitation to a meeting.” Farhan linked his hands on top of his desk, pleased when they didn’t tremble. “He won’t be persuaded otherwise.”
“We’ll see.”
Ezra walked into the room like he didn’t have a care in the world, hands in his pockets, gait long and easy. A lock of blond hair fell across his forehead, and Farhan was helpless to stop his fingers from curling with the urge to smooth it back for him, to trace the flawless skin that luminesced with power and drew people to Ezra like iron filings to a magnet.
“I’m quite skilled at convincing people to do what I want.” He produced a dagger that gleamed with white light. “All you need is the correct leverage. The enclave is proving harder to stamp out than anticipated. They scattered like cockroaches before my legion.” He thumbed the hilt. “A father’s love can only spread so thin. My son must have favorites. You can tell me who they are, and I’ll make your death quick.”
Knox. Kimora. Lira.
Which of them would Farhan sacrifice to save his own hide?
“Fuck you.” He exhaled with the relief of surrendering his burden. The double agent gig was up. “Luce will end you.”
“Not if I end her first.” Those same easy, gliding steps brought him within arm’s reach of Farhan. All that separated them was his battered desk, and particle board wasn’t much of a deterrent. “I regret you made me resort to such crude measures.”
Easy as sliding the blade into its sheath, Ezra took his time sinking the razor-sharp metal to the hilt in Farhan’s gut.
He gritted his teeth to keep his groan from escaping. It was too early for him to cry uncle. He had to make this last and greatest sacrifice count.
“That the best you got?” he panted through the cresting waves of agony. “I expected something more original from The Original.”
Ezra smiled then, and it was full of warmth, so beautiful Farhan blamed the tears in his eyes on witnessing the joy his execution brought Ezra.
“Child.” His eyes twinkled with delight. “All I’ve done is introduce a toxin to your bloodstream that will make transporting you simpler.” He twisted the blade without flinching. “You and I will have a civilized discussion about my son and his … indiscretions. You can cooperate, or you can be coerced. You will tell me all you know either way. The choice is yours. I’ll leave you to it.”
The poison swam through his blood like molasses. Eyes heavy, he tipped his head forward, chin resting on his chest. He sagged on the dagger, and the blade ripped through him. Ezra was allowing him to eviscerate himself.
“Adam inherited my charisma.” Ezra kept his wrist firm, his arm an iron bar. “Your loyalty is misplaced, unearned. Adam isn’t worth this. Don’t let a sentimental attachment, one that isn’t real, cost you your life.”
The rest of the speech drifted in one ear and out the other. The haze of pain clouded Farhan’s brain, made his eyelids too heavy to lift. His knees buckled, and thanks to his chin hitting the desk, he fell back and off the dagger.
Ezra had one thing right. Adam wasn’t worth this. But it had never been about him.
Farhan had killed too often for empathy to be more than an afterthought, an emotion he ought to experience that prompted him to say and do the appropriate thing. His job as a janitor had broken a vital part of him, and the only way he saw to fix it was to patch up the world that had churned him out so no other kid got the same raw deal. Starting with taking out the dick who helped shape this world in his own image.
Black edged Farhan’s vision, and the pain twisting through his gut chased him into the dark.
CHAPTER SIX
The Rixtons’ home looked exactly how I remembered it. Welcoming. Spotless. Lived-in. A place any cop would roll up to after a long shift and exhale thank God I’m home after parking in the driveway. It radiated comfort and peace, a bastion in the life of a detective who never took his work home with him when he could help it.
Sherry was sitting in a rocker on the front porch when we arrived, Nettie bouncing on her knee. She scooped the baby against her chest and leapt to her feet when she spotted us. “Luce.”
“Hey, Sherry.” I tried for a smile, but it wouldn’t gel. “Rixton Jr. is looking happy and healthy.”
“Don’t call her that.” Sherry recoiled in mock horror. “The last thing she needs is to grow up like her daddy.”
“A cop?” I wondered, aware she wasn’t a big fan of law enforcement careers.
“No.” She slanted her husband an exasperated look. “A sailor-mouthed man-child who thinks ice cream for dinner is perfectly reasonable as long as it complements the cookies he ate for lunch.”
“I have a bossy stomach,” Rixton protested, pausing to drop a kiss on her lips. “I have to do what it tells me to do, or it makes me pay.”
“All the grease and sugar, that’s what makes you pay. Your stomach is the victim here.”
A smile warmed me down to my toes to hear their familiar bickering, but it came to an abrupt end when Sherry registered how close Cole stood to me, that he was there at all.
“We need to talk, Sher-bear.” Rixton kissed her again. “All of us.”
Gone was the wild-eyed joy of riding a dragon. This was Rixton the husband, the father, and he wouldn’t make this easy for me when it came to airing my dirty laundry in front of his wife.
Turning on hostess mode, she asked, “Would you like to come in?”
Unruffled by her scrutiny, Cole took my hand. “Yes, thank you.”
“Well.” She beamed at me. “Well, well, well. How the mighty have fallen.”
“You have no room to talk,” I grumbled, falling into old patterns with ease. “Look what you married.”
“Hey, we all have to live with the consequences of our decisions.”
“I’m not a consequence,” Rixton huffed. “I’m a prize, like the kind you find in the bottom of a cereal box.”
“Cheap?” I winged up an eyebrow. “Made out of plastic?”
“I’m not cheap.” He sniffed. “You’ve seen the bills I run up at diners.”
“No one believes you’re cheap.” Sherry patted his arm then guided him inside. “Take a seat and then you can all explain to me why you’re here. Together.” She settled
Nettie in a bouncy seat she placed at my feet with instructions on how to keep it jogging the baby, a mildly terrifying proposition, then clasped her hands. “Anyone want a drink? Water? Milk? Wait, no. All I have is breastmilk. Sweet tea?”
“Tea would be great,” I said, and Cole agreed.
“Alas, I only have two hands.” Sherry admired her manicure. “Luce, join me in the kitchen?”
“Happy to help.” I grimaced, aware I couldn’t escape the trap she had set.
About two steps into the kitchen, she pounced. “You’re with the mountain man?”
“Yep.” My own personal mantain. “I am.”
“With him, with him?” she whisper-screamed. “He’s so tall and muscular and … ” She made hand gestures that, I assumed, meant she wondered if he wrestled anacondas in his spare time. “Know what I mean?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Not a clue. “We should hurry up and get back in there.”
“John isn’t going to grill your boyfriend.” She all but sang the last word. “He’s going to be happy you’ve found someone who gets you.”
Tilting my head, I asked, “How can you tell Cole gets me?”
“Oh, he gets you all right. Probably every day and twice on Sundays. He watched your butt as you walked away like some guys watch the Super Bowl.”
“The relationship is new.” Eons old, but fresh to me. “We haven’t even had sex yet.”
“Aww.” She made a heart with her hands. “I’m so happy for you. You never date, but you brought this one home. He must be special.” Switching gears, she poured sweet tea in enough glasses to go around. “So what’s with the cloak and dagger? You were … harsh … at the coffee shop. I didn’t expect to see you again, at least not for a while. You lectured me on going behind John’s back and then you show up with the man in question. What gives?”
“We really need to do this with the guys present.” I helped her carry glasses. “And Sherry? I’m sorry about the coffee shop. Rixton texted me after, asked if we could meet up. We did, and we worked out a few things. Maybe not enough to make us okay, but it’s a start.”
Rise Against: A Foundling novel (The Foundling Series) Page 5
