by Keri Arthur
After moving as far forward as I could and ensuring I was clear of anything that would obstruct his wings, I closed my eyes and waited. While part of me wanted to watch Damon swoop in, part of me feared it, too. I’d seen the damage claws could do to a human body and I doubted I could force myself to stand still while such a large dragon swept down toward me.
The air began to stir, softly at first, barely even teasing my hair. But the nearer he got, the more tumultuous it became, until I felt like there was a maelstrom swirling around me.
Then, as gently as a first-time kiss, his claws wrapped around me, encasing me securely as his wings swept us upward again.
At first I was too frozen by fear to even open my eyes. Any minute now he’s going to drop me. Any minute now, I was going to crash down on the rocks like before. And while there might not actually be rocks below us, the ocean gained the consistency of concrete when you plunged into it from any great height.
The air howled past my ears—a sound that should have been all-encompassing but wasn’t. I could hear the ocean far below, feel the chill wash of moonlight across my skin, smell the leathery, musky aroma of dragon—sounds and scents that sang to my soul and made me want to smile.
As the minutes ticked by and his grip didn’t loosen—and I didn’t drop—the fear eased enough to open my eyes.
Far below us, the ocean raced for the shore, thin strips of white foam breaking across a blacker expanse. On the fast-approaching land, multicolored lights twinkled like stars in the night. The howl of the air became a sound that was sweeter than any I could have imagined, and the sweep of wings filled my soul.
And suddenly it wasn’t scary anymore. It was beautiful and exhilarating and I spread my arms wide, imagining that I was a dragon, that it was me flying on gauzy, glittering wings, sweeping through the night so swiftly and so elegantly.
It was a glorious sensation. A dream fulfilled—even if it wasn’t my wings or my shape. Laughter rose, bubbling through my body—a sound that was as free and as happy as I felt.
But it ended far too soon. We were barely even over land when we were sweeping downward again. The starlight twinkle of lights separated and grew, becoming long sweeps of roads along which the occasional car traveled. Rooftops and trees became visible, along with brightly lit shopping malls and office districts.
Damon banked and headed to the right. Ahead was a vast blot of darkness. As we drew closer, I realized it was a golf course. The perfect spot for a dragon to land unseen.
As the ground grew closer, our speed dropped until it almost felt like we were hovering. Damon released me, and I dropped the last two feet. I hit the ground running and kept going, getting out of his way.
He landed with unusual grace for such a large dragon, quickly furling his wings as the blue shape-shifting fire began to crawl across his body, giving his black scales an unearthly glow until it encased him completely. Not only did it hide his form, it hid the transformation from dragon body to fully clothed human.
Then the blue fire began to fade and I walked toward him. He turned around, his gaze sweeping my body before returning to meet mine. A small smile teased the corners of his mouth and creased the corners of his dark eyes.
“It sounded like you enjoyed that.”
I stopped in front of him, drawing in the delightful musk of man and dragon that lingered on the air, then leaned forward and dropped a kiss on a cheek still slightly chilled by our flight. “I did. And thank you.”
I would have stepped back, but he lightly cupped the back of my neck with his hand and stopped me. “For what?”
“For not dropping me.” His fingers were barely touching my skin, but it was a weight I felt all the way down to my toes. The heat of his body caressed mine, chasing the last remnants of ice from my flesh. I might not like this man’s attitude to my kind, but that wasn’t stopping my reaction to his closeness.
“Oh, I can think of better ways to thank me than a mere peck on the cheek,” he said, his tone as teasing as his expression.
I raised an eyebrow, even as excitement began to thrum through me. “Can you?”
“Yes,” he murmured, not appearing to move and yet somehow close enough that his body pressed against mine, heating me in ways I couldn’t even begin to describe.
I licked suddenly dry lips, torn between the desire to seize the moment and the knowledge that it just wasn’t the right time. And that this man wasn’t the type of dragon I should ever play with. Even if Janelle hadn’t already given me that warning, every sense screamed with the knowledge that he was dangerous in more ways than I could imagine. And his lack of respect for my kind wasn’t even the worst of it.
But it didn’t seem to matter. I wanted him. Wanted to kiss him, to feel his lips against mine again, to explore and taste and enjoy.
And the hunger in his dark eyes suggested that he wanted the same thing.
“Damon, we really need to get moving.”
The words came out breathy and barely audible, and my gaze was drawn to his lips as another smile curved them so deliciously.
“Yes, we do,” he agreed.
Then those delicious lips met mine, and there was no more time for thought, no more time for words. No more time for anything but this kiss. I wrapped my arms around his neck, drawing him closer, tasting him fully even as he tasted and explored me. And though it began as something very sweet, it quickly evolved into something that was raw and powerful and so very erotic.
For too many minutes there was nothing but the hunger of this kiss and the passion that rose between us. Then reality intruded in the form of a gruff voice.
“Hey, you two. This ain’t no lovers’ lane.”
Damon released me and stepped away. Just for a moment, everything around me spun, the abrupt ending to our kiss like a splash of cold water.
I ran a tongue across kiss-bruised lips, drawing in a final taste of him, then turned toward the owner of the voice. He was little more than a gruff-sounding shadow within the confines of a golf cart.
“Sorry,” Damon said, voice as cool and calm as ever. As if he hadn’t just experienced a mind-blowing kiss. “I was just showing my girlfriend where I scored the hole-in-one the other day.”
The other man snorted, and it was a sound filled with disbelief. “There’s a hotel up the road better suited to your purposes. And besides, the course closed several hours ago.”
“Sorry, no harm meant.” Damon touched my elbow, then headed down a small gravel path.
“Do you know where you’re going?” I shoved my hands in my pockets and tried not to think about the man beside me, the way the occasional brush of his arm against mine sent little tingles of desire racing across my skin.
“I have no idea,” he said, his gaze on the night ahead. “But I noticed a couple of large buildings in this general direction when we swooped in, so we’re probably headed the right way.”
“I guess he’d come after us if we weren’t.” I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder to see just what, exactly, the man was doing, and added, “So how are we going to get to Moraga Drive?”
“Simple. We steal a car with navigation.”
I raised an eyebrow. “As grand plans go, that’s pretty lame.”
“You got a better idea?”
Yeah, kiss me senseless again. I pushed the thought away and shrugged lightly. “Death stealing a car just seems wrong.”
“Why? It’s practically a national pastime.”
I smiled wryly. “So my brother says.”
“Your brother sounds like a very sensible man.”
“Yeah, my brother inherited all the sensible in our family.” Not, I added silently, with a wry smile. “And when we get there?”
He shrugged. “It depends on what we find.”
I glanced at him again. “You don’t expect her to be alive, do you?”
“Honestly? I think we’ll be extremely lucky to find her breathing, but you never know—they might wait to get confirmation of Angus’s de
ath before they move on Coral.”
And if we weren’t lucky, then she was dead and both she and Angus were destined to join Rainey in roaming the endless plains between this world and the next. And with all the souls lost in the two towns, it had to be getting pretty crowded.
We walked on in silence. He didn’t mention the kiss and neither did I, but I knew what we’d started would not end here. The genie was out of the bottle and—respect or not, dangerous or not—I wasn’t about to try and push him back.
Ahead, lights began to twinkle through the darkness, and the mellow tones of music rode the air. I frowned. “I didn’t think the clubhouse would be open at this hour.”
“Usually they’re not, but given the chatter I can hear underneath the music, it’s probably hosting some sort of function. Hence the guard. Which means there could be good pickings when it comes to stealing a vehicle.”
His guess turned out to be correct. The clubhouse was a massive two-story Tuscan-style building with white walls and a pale green roof. We followed a path around the side of the building and headed toward the parking lot. It was huge, but not entirely well lit, brightness pooling in puddles and leaving many areas locked in shadow—which made it almost perfect for thieves, except that there were static security cameras on at least one light pole in each row.
Damon didn’t hesitate, moving with certainty toward an older-looking gray Ford parked in one of the more shadowy areas. He touched my back and motioned me toward the passenger side, then said softly, “Keep your back to the camera.”
I did as he said, and watched while he moved around to the driver’s side. Three seconds, and he was in. He leaned across and opened the door, then reached back and grabbed the street directory from the backseat.
“Not a navigation system, but almost as good,” he said, handing it to me once I was in.
I opened the directory and searched street names, looking for Moraga Drive and keeping my head down as he started the car and drove off smoothly. I found it, traced a route back to the golf club, then began issuing directions as we left. Moraga Drive was, naturally enough, on the other side of Santa Rosa, but traffic was scarce and we got there in pretty good time.
Luckily, there was only one blue house on the street, and even in the dark it was obvious that the place was a “major fixer-upper.”
Damon pulled to a halt down the street from the darkened house and turned off the lights. The run-down old house was barely visible through the brick-and-iron fencing, not to mention all the trees, but yellow light peeked softly through torn curtains.
“So what’s the plan?” I whispered.
“Angus mentioned a boundary alarm, so the first thing I need to do is find and disconnect that.” He glanced at me, his expression fierce. Death was clearly gearing up for another fight. “Our friends on the boat said they were only using draman to mind her, but I’ll go in hard and fast, just in case they lied.”
“What do you want me to do?” I didn’t want to sit here and wait. But, by the same token, I wasn’t trained for this sort of stuff, and I might only get in his way.
“Come around to the driver’s side and keep the engine running. We may need to make a fast getaway.”
I nodded and climbed out of the car. The crisp wind spun around me, holding a hint of age and decay. I hoped it wasn’t an omen, hoped that the run-down old house held something more than the chill of true death.
Damon had climbed out of the car and was standing beside the door, holding it open for me.
“Be careful in there,” I said, pausing beside him.
He smiled and touched my cheek. “I have an unfinished kiss to get back to, so rest assured that I will.”
I raised an eyebrow and said, somewhat sardonically, “There you go again—presuming I’ll just fall in with your plans.”
“There’s no presumption about it. You know it, and I know it.” He gave me a devilish grin that just about melted my insides. “It’s just a matter of when, not if.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but just as I did, a soft sound similar to a car backfiring came from the direction of the house.
It had barely even registered as a gunshot before Damon hit me, pushing me down and covering my body with his as the car window above us shattered into a million tiny pieces.
Chapter Nine
I slammed knee-first into the road, but the pain that shot up my legs was nothing compared to the fear. My heart was going a million miles an hour and my throat was so dry, even breathing hurt. We only had the open door as protection, and the metal just didn’t seem like adequate armor against a potential rain of bullets. Only it didn’t happen.
From within the house came the sound of screaming—furious, feminine screaming—and it was accompanied by the sound of tearing metal and a weird whooshing noise. A second later, the roof of the house exploded upward, propelled by a jet of water. And carried along with it was a man, yelling as he tried to fire a gun back into the house.
A sea dragon’s greatest weapon might be the sea, but they can control any sort of water. Even the stuff that came through rusting pipes—which made me wonder why she hadn’t done that before now, and escaped.
“It appears our sea dragon is still alive,” Damon murmured, grabbing my arms and hauling me upright. “Come on.”
He hurried me across the road and behind the cover of another car, but the shooters were obviously too occupied by the mayhem within to worry about us.
Another muffled shot rang out and the fountain of water dipped dramatically before rising again.
“Stay here,” Damon murmured, then ran, crouched, toward the house.
I shifted position so I could watch him. In the darkness he was little more than a shadow quickly lost to normal sight, and only my odd awareness of the man allowed me to keep track of his progress.
He slipped over the metal gate and ran toward the house. As he did so, an old wooden chair exploded through the front window, hitting the concrete and shattering into a dozen pieces.
A woman with dark hair was briefly silhouetted, running across the shattered remains of the window before disappearing. Several heartbeats later, a blond man appeared, a gun held in front of him as he chased her. More shots rang out. More furniture flew.
In the houses around us, lights were coming on, but no one had come out to see what was happening. I wondered if anyone had called the cops, and how long it would take them to arrive if they had been called. I doubted Damon wanted any sort of interaction with the human police, and Coral sure as hell wouldn’t. She’d be desperate to get to her mate before dawn—and any delay would be a problem.
All sounds from the house suddenly ceased. Both the crashing of furniture and the gunshots had stopped, though water still cascaded through the shattered remains of the roof, and the guard was no closer to escaping it. I scanned the outside of the building, wondering what the hell was going on in there. I no longer had any sense of Damon—he’d slipped around to the rear of the house, beyond reach of my senses. I bit my lip, hating having to stand here, feeling like a fifth wheel with nothing important to do or contribute.
The front door of a neighboring house opened and an elderly woman peeked out. I shifted back into the shadows to ensure she couldn’t see me. She clutched her blue dressing gown close to her chest, peering out at the water, then shook her head and went back inside.
As her door closed, a muffled scream came from inside the shattered blue house, then another window exploded. This time it wasn’t broken by a chair, but rather a woman. She hit the ground awkwardly and clambered to her feet, running toward the trees and the metal fence beyond. But the blond man appeared in the window, gun raised and aimed at the woman’s back.
“Coral, drop,” I shouted, and reached for my fire, feeling it rip through my body—a maelstrom of deadly force that was eager and ready to be used.
As Coral threw herself to the ground, the gun swung my way. I thrust to my feet and flung the fire. The flaming ribbon arced across the ni
ght, the force of it all but drowning out the sound of the shot as the guard fired his weapon. I threw myself sideways and felt the burn of the bullet cut through the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Saw my flames hit the guard and wrap around both his arm and the weapon.
Then a black shadow engulfed him, and the guard disappeared from sight. I pushed away from the car and walked toward the fence. The dark-haired woman still lay on the grass where’d she’d fallen, her breath rapid and clothes soaked and bloody. I couldn’t see a wound on her back, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
“Coral? Are you okay?”
She shifted and glanced up at me. Even in the darkness, her eyes seemed to glow with an unearthly sea green fire. “Who are you?” she said, her voice scratchy and holding only the slightest hint of a Scottish accent.
“Angus sent us,” I said. “He wanted us to rescue you.”
“But no one can rescue him now,” she said, her voice breaking a little. She pushed to her knees and tucked a wet strand of hair behind her ear. “You were with him when he died?”
“Yes.” I hesitated. “We caught the men who shot him. They’re on the boat with his body.”
That unearthly glow got brighter. “They’re alive?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Though there was little emotion in her voice, it still sent a shiver down my spine. Those men were not long for the world if this sea dragon had anything to do with it.
And while I hadn’t actually saved them from Damon just so they could face this woman’s wrath, part of me could understand her need for revenge. If anything happened to my brother, I’d shift heaven and hell to find those responsible.
Heck, I was doing that now for Rainey.
The front door of the house opened and Damon appeared. Coral spun, her hand raised and the sensation of power suddenly surging across the night.
“No,” I said quickly. “He’s with me.”
She glanced at me, then lowered her hand. The energy died, and with it went the water that had been jetting through the roof. The guard fell with a scream that ended abruptly as his body snagged on one of the jagged rafters, hanging there like a limp piece of meat.
