“No, nursing school pushed all nonessential information out of my head. What’s your name again?”
“Oh, that’s low,” he said, grabbing his chest and looking pained before rebounding and giving her a look. “So, what, like, now that I know about your man, you’re just flaunting him at me now?” His eyes indicated her shirt.
Andi inhaled sharply. “Would you believe that nursing school also pushed out the fact that dragons can smell other dragons?”
“Sure,” Danny said with a shrug, shaking his head before giving her a lopsided grin, half-poisonous, half-pure. “Why not.”
Once inside, the arena opened up, and the entire floor of it was parked full of all sorts of vintage cars. There weren’t too many people yet, and she guessed most of the owners gravitated toward their own cars for quick inspections. She followed Danny’s lead and he took her over to a neon green car, which had a square of paper underneath a windshield wiper, announcing it was a 1970 Plymouth Duster.
Andi looked at the car. It was a car, just like any other car, only greener, and then looked at her brother, who’d ditched her to peer in the windows and make out the smaller writing on the tag. She pulled her phone out of a pocket and turned around to snap a desultory selfie with the car over her shoulder and started texting Damian.
Danny was back at her side in an instant. “Who’re you texting?”
“You know very well who I’m texting.”
“Should I be in the photo?”
“Probably not. Besides, he’ll see the cars and know I’m out with you.”
“What does he think about that?” Danny asked, frowning, as she finished typing the words to go along with the photo—just gotta tell him about the cages is all. wish me luck—and hit send.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make him happy. But he’s also not a controlling jerk, so….” she said with a shrug, as they walked to the next car. “He cares about me.”
“So do I,” Danny said.
She raised her hand between them just like he had his the prior night, rocked it, and said, “Ehhhhhhh.”
“Look, I don’t have to be around you all the time. Not when we have history.”
“Well, that part’s true.” She made a show of looking in the windows of the car they were beside, even though she didn’t know what she should be looking for. “I was just remembering that one day at the zoo with the tigers. When you were so pissed off they were in cages.”
Danny laughed. “I about had you over that guard rail. If Mom hadn’t come by when she did, oh my God. That shit would’ve made the evening news for sure. And do you remember after that? All our plots?”
“Oh my gosh,” Andi said, putting her hand to her mouth. “I’d forgotten.” They’d spent the rest of that summer formulating plans to get the tigers out. They were going to smuggle in ropes and they stripped an umbrella of its fabric and struts so that they just had the extendable pole to help them reach the buttons. “We were so serious, weren’t we?”
“Deadly so! I don’t know how Mom handled us, frankly. We were kind of jerks when we teamed up.”
Andi snickered and sighed, biting her lips. “Danny…you can’t let them put you in a cage again.”
“What, because I’m a tiger?” he asked with a glint in his eye.
“No, because you’re you. And you’ve got to let all those other people go.”
“I’m doing science, Andi; it’s not safe,” he scoffed.
“What if your ‘science’ never works? Or what if something happens to you? Then what happens to all them?”
“Like what?” he laughed. “I’m fucking invincible, Andi.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” she said with a head shake.
He took a fast step closer. “What’re you saying, Andi-bear? Is your man coming for me?”
“No. He would never,” Andi protested, and then Damian materialized beside them. He was wearing an all-black outfit that clung to him, outlining every tensely flexing muscle, his strong arms and his broad chest, wrapping around his thighs like a hug. The outfit’s color matched his hair, the stubble on his square chin, and his mood. He’d brought his storm with him; she could read it in his bearing, and his gold eyes shone like distant lighting.
She knew he wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t trouble, but at seeing him, she’d never felt safer.
“Both of you need to take one of these, now,” he demanded, holding two marble-sized spheres on his palm. Andi remembered them from their night in the hospital, how they’d allowed them to get away safely without being seen. She took one without hesitation.
“What the fuck,” Danny seethed at seeing him.
“You’re in danger, asshole. I’m here to save you. Take this so you can hide,” Damian said, shoving his hand farther out.
Danny picked the sphere up, held it up for inspection, and then crushed it like a grape before flicking it aside. “Fuck you.”
“Danny!” She immediately got between them. “I’m sure Damian has a reason!”
“He does, and I’m looking at it,” her brother growled at her. “Step aside, Andi.”
“Don’t change!” Damian shouted. “That’s what they want!”
“Who?” Andi asked of him.
“The Hunters that’ve lined this arena with weapons,” Damian answered, looking only at her brother. “They’re coming for you. Other Hunters.” He stepped closer to them both. “If you stay between Andi and me, our spheres can cover you, we can keep you protected until we get out of here.”
“My people would never—” Danny began.
“The other Hunters don’t give a shit, and your people are in cages,” Damian growled.
Danny’s eyes narrowed in on her. “You told him? Is that why you wanted me to free them? You felt guilty for playing along with his trap?”
Andi gasped. “Danny…no! There’s no trap here! Damian would never lie!” She reached for him as he stepped back into a clearing. She heard the sharp report of a distant gunshot, followed by a scream.
Damian intuited what Danny was planning before she did, and started talking fast. “My people are up there, taking out Hunters, risking their lives for you because I asked them to. Don’t do this, Danny. Don’t waste their efforts. And don’t put her in danger.” Damian placed himself in front of her. “I am begging you, as a dragon, and a man. Do not do this. Please.”
Danny shrugged and shook his head. “Nah. This is all your fault. Although, I suppose we both knew it would come to this, didn’t we?” And then he spread his arms wide, threw his head back, and Andi didn’t see what came next because Damian picked her up and ran.
Andi yelped in surprise and struggled against Damian, not to fight him, but because she had to see. She pulled herself up to peek over his shoulder and saw that Danny wasn’t Danny anymore. He was a dragon now, slightly smaller than Damian’s, four legs and two wings, and beautifully, dangerously, sinuous. Instead of gold, he was a deep army green, almost the color of his Elky. Screams started up behind them on all sides.
“Oh God, Damian.” She didn’t bother to ask if his story was true. Of course it was. “How many Hunters are there?”
He set her down inside one of the cement alcoves that lead to the arena floor. “A lot.” He looked over his shoulder at Danny, then gave her a haunted look. “Andi—I don’t want to fight him. You have to believe me.”
“I do,” she said, and meant it. He stood up straight and became invisible because she wasn’t inside a sphere anymore. “Shit!” she cursed. “I dropped mine—” It’d gotten jostled from her hand when he’d grabbed her.
“Take mine,” Damian said, planting his into her hand.
“No!” She shook her head quickly, trying to give it back. “The Hunters—they know who I am. They know not to shoot me. My uncle would—”
“I don’t think we can risk your life on them being afraid of him right now.” A herd of people were running down the hall behind them, none of them sparing them a glance inside their bubble
of magic, although Damian was having to shout to be heard above their screams. “I need you to be safe, Andi. I can survive anything as long as I know that you’re all right,” he told her, and she realized he was leaving.
She stood straighter and slammed both her fists against his chest, finding it rock hard, like his dragon was waiting, just underneath. “You have to come back to me!”
Everything about him softened, just for a moment, and he leaned into her hands. “Of course, princess. It’s fate,” he said, then pulled away and ran into the crowd behind them, going against the flow.
Despite the fact that all his dragon wanted to do was change and wrestle Danny, Damian knew that wasn’t very smart. His crew kept reporting in via earpieces. No casualties so far, but the tide of Hunters hadn’t slowed, and a few of the Hunters had talismans that let them see through the spheres’s magicks, so clearing them out wasn’t going as fast as they had hoped.
He ran back into the arena and up a set of stairs, knowing that Danny could likely smell him, but he needed to make it to the second level quickly because Jamison was in his ear shouting out the location of the nearest harpoon.
“Second floor, section C, behind the sound station!”
“I see it,” Damian grunted, running flat out.
It would be faster if we flew, his dragon complained, likely because he himself wanted to change.
And give them two targets?
They are mere humans, his dragon sniffed.
Who still managed to orchestrate all this. Damian was nearing the Hunters now. There was a group of them still trying to get their weapon in place.
The harpoons were heavy and unwieldy and they hadn’t gotten to bolt the launchers into the ground so they had them wedged in between steep rows of seating, and they were aiming it as a group. One of them saw him nearing but then ignored him entirely, likely thinking that he was just some lost car aficionado, racing up out of fear, until he reached them and started throwing the men and women there aside like rag dolls, not caring how they landed or if he hurt them. When he was done, he pulled the whole assembly free, yanking out the harpoon to bend it against his knee, before stomping a dent into the launcher’s barrel. “Next?” he demanded.
“Same spot, two floors up!”
Damian looked up at the wide shelf of concrete above him. “Fuck.”
Now? his dragon asked, waiting, longing to go back to Danny.
No. Not yet. We have to take these fucking things out first.
Why?
Because! Damian shouted at it, but then they both saw their answer. A harpoon sailed out from above, aiming at Danny, who had been pacing the arena floor with his bulk. It missed, landing just beside him, but it exploded still, and suddenly Danny’s dragon turned, looking at where it’d just been shot from. Danny’s dragon hurled itself into the sky, hovering, before coming straight at them.
“Duck, duck, duck!” Mills shouted in his ear, but he didn’t. Damian was pinned in awe. He hadn’t seen another dragon in flight since his father had died, he’d forgotten how glorious their passage was.
Danny’s dragon reared its neck back sixty feet overhead, and then spewed out fire. Two floors below Damian was still buffeted by its heat. He knew all the Hunters above were dead, and he heard the sounds of the rest of the munitions there exploding.
And then Danny’s dragon turned to look at him.
“We’re on the same side,” Damian bellowed, wondering if it could hear him. But before he could find out, another harpoon shot across the arena and hit Danny’s flank, exploding and shoving him sideways. The dragon howled and whirled in midair, turning to chase this new assailant down.
Other harpoons popped off, their nylon tails stretching behind them like streamers, like the car show below them was being decorated for a particularly bloody prom. Not all of them hit, and not all of them were explosive, but they were harrying him, and soon Danny’s green-scaled bulk was dotted with harpoons, making him look like a toreador’s bull at the end of a fight. Damian felt his own dragon sink in on itself internally, finally understanding.
“We took out half of them Damian, but there’s just too—” Jamison began on his earpiece.
“I know,” Damian cut in, racing for the railing to watch what was happening below. Danny’s dragon had been knocked back to the floor of the arena, where it was picking up cars to hurl at the people that shot at it. It shrieked defiance with each new blow, writhing itself left and right, casting about itself in a circle of fire. Its wings were so shredded, they’d take too long to heal, so it couldn’t fly again now if it tried. He hoped like hell that Andi’d gone, as he cupped his hand to his earpiece to shout, “Tell everyone to keep going!”
Andi was entirely sure she should have left but she just couldn’t. The rational part of her brain had taken the first bus and was half-way home, but the rest of her, the things that made her her, all her emotions and guts and blood, kept her pinned here, hiding just inside the cement alcove where Damian had left her, watching her brother fight.
And…lose.
It didn’t matter that he was a dragon. He kept healing, but they kept fighting him, shooting him with horrible things that looked like spears. Oh, God, fucking harpoons? They’d already knocked him out of the sky and now massive metal nets were dropping down, the size of a basketball court. He kept burning things and thrashing and throwing cars, but there was nothing he could do. The hunters were too far away to attack and they were pinning him to the ground.
All of that power he’d been imbued with, all of the torture that he’d tolerated, and it was going to end here for him. Like this.
Alone.
Or not…because she started running for him. It was the absolute stupidest thing she could do, but she couldn’t listen to the dragon—her brother, Danny!—howl in pain and not respond. Not as a nurse…and not as a sister.
“Danny!” she shouted, so he would know she was coming for him, running around the wreckage of burning cars, trying to see him through the smoke. “DANNY!”
She saw his grand head raise, trying to see her, straining against the nets. A harpoon speared out of his neck, and she could see the spurting green of his blood. “I’m here, Danny!” she cried, racing up beneath him, getting splashed.
But his eyes wouldn’t focus on her and he was looking around wildly.
“I’m here!” she shouted. His head fell to look directly at her, his wide nostrils taking monstrous inhaling breaths, and she realized he couldn’t see her with the sphere, only smell her, and she smelled like Damian. “It’s not a trick! It’s me!” She threw the sphere away, revealing herself, and Danny bent his head to acknowledge her with a sorrowful sound.
He didn’t sound human anymore, and she didn’t think the Hunters would stop now, even if he did.
“Step away from the dragon, girl,” someone with an Australian accent told her. She turned to see Jack there, with his omnipresent ivory toothpick, and a beautiful Latina woman by his side.
“At this point, why save her?” Xochitl said, unsheathing her bone sword.
Danny snaked up a protective paw around her, and flapping the remnants of his wings against the nets that pinned him ineffectually. Andi struggled to bring one of his claws down so that they could see her speak. “You don’t want to do this,” she warned them.
“Andrea, we’re not afraid of your uncle,” Jack said with a rough laugh.
Andi stepped onto Danny’s lowest claw to gain more height and shook her head. “That’s not who’s coming.”
Chapter 15
Damian had forced himself to wait for the last possible moment as Danny roiled, trapped on the ground. The more Hunters that were drawn away from their caches of nets and harpoons, the better. Mills reported in that they were leaving their stations in droves, each of them so eager to get a knife into Danny’s side.
But then he’d seen Andi, running for the other dragon.
Of course, she hadn’t left him.
He should’ve known th
ere’d be no way. The second Danny was injured, her path had been set. By fate or destiny—take your pick—she was going to fight by his fool side.
Just as he was destined to do anything to protect her.
“I know what you’re thinking, brother,” Ryana said, panting from exertion, over their intercom. The only reason he’d let her come on this mission was because if things went south, there’d be no one left at his castle to protect her. “Don’t.”
A wave of Hunters reached the arena floor and were racing for Danny as one.
Damian leapt up to the cement railing in front of him. “Ryana, if you’re lucky, someday you’ll also be mated…and you’ll know I never had a choice.” He pulled out his earpiece and let himself go.
His dragon rose up and overtook him, and for a brief moment they were one and the same. He felt the expansion of its wings, felt the glory of its strength, and heard himself trumpet a challenge with its throat, until he was compressed back inside to the place he stayed when it ran wild.
It launched itself off of the railing, soared briefly overhead, and then landed purposefully in the midst of the Hunters running in, roiling its tail to swipe whole herds of Hunters sideways, flapping its wings to knock down more and building up fire in its throat.
Damian didn’t need his dragon to tell him that it was happy, as it shoved at the nearest burning car with its paw, sending the hot metal skidding back into another row of fighters. It was in its element, using all its senses, tracking and triangulating, as it waded through the attacking Hunters. Bone swords chipped at its scales, and talismanned daggers pricked, but he was a dragon, a mighty beast, and there was nothing that any human could do to stop it. He roared flames at them, catching even more cars on fire, and he would kill and keep killing until Andi was safe.
“No!” he heard her shout, and then she wailed.
His dragon snapped its head in her direction and ran forward on all fours. A woman with a bone sword was there, plunging it into Danny’s side, and Andi was trying to get free of her brother’s claws to fight her.
Dragon Mated: Sexy Urban Fantasy Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds Book 4) Page 25
