by Lisa Oliver
But why the air holes, if I was meant to die anyway? Why not just kill me in the elevator?
Nothing made sense. It was almost as if someone was prolonging his inevitable demise, but for what purpose? There were no cameras, or spy holes Byron could see. Was his death meant to send a message to someone else, and if so, who?
Sammy’s mate is calling in a favor from a European coven, Dancer was back. Apparently, Raoul has contacts. They’re going to liaise with Dirk and a few wolf shifters are coming along too. Dirk says Petrov’s missing, and they think he might have something to do with all this so Rastin and Leonard are flying back to New York to try and track him down.
None of this makes sense. Byron looked up at the air vent. Have you got any fire left?
Dancer could see where he was looking. Don’t get hit by fallen debris. Byron opened his mouth and flames roared at the ceiling.
Chapter Eleven
“Why aren’t you at work?” Ice was busy on his computer, trying to track down leads without alerting anyone he knew about what he was doing, when Petrov stumbled into the kitchen heading straight for the coffee pot. Petrov’s place was okay as far as small houses went, but it was nothing like what Ice was used to. After only snatching two hours sleep, Ice had assumed his brother had gone to work early when he didn’t show up in the kitchen first thing.
“I’ve been suspended,” Petrov growled. “Dirk couldn’t get hold of me because I was too busy helping your ass. He wanted me to go to Europe with him, because they’ve got a lead on Byron. Someone must have hinted I had something to do with the dragon’s disappearance. I have been told, make that ordered, to report to the Hollingsworth company and place myself in the hands of the detectives leading the case.”
“Yes, that makes sense.” Ice rubbed his hands together. “Get rid of my prospective mate and my only known family. This guy is good. Really good.”
The lid of Ice’s laptop came crashing down, narrowly missing his fingers. “Are you seriously that self-centered? I’m going to lose my job over this mess.”
“I really don’t know what you are stressing about. You didn’t have anything to do with the dragon’s disappearance, and when the detectives realize you’re not lying, you’ll be in the clear. I don’t understand why they haven’t realized that from the last time you talked to them.” Ice lifted the lid of his laptop again. He was so glad Petrov wasn’t implicated. It meant he could direct his focus at the real culprit. Hmm… his fingers twitched above the keyboard.
“The dragon’s name is Byron Hollingsworth.” Ice wasn’t quick enough to save his laptop that went flying across the room. Petrov definitely woke up on the wrong side of the bed. “You keep distancing yourself. You keep calling him ‘the dragon’. You insisted I do the same. That dragon has a name. He’s not one of your chess pieces on the elaborate game of life you play, he’s a living breathing being in his own right. He’s your mate!”
“Well, obviously.” Ice was thankful everything he had that was important was saved to his own personal cloud server. “Pachinko wouldn’t have touched him otherwise.”
“Pachinko Ruble? You think the Russian mobster has something to do with this? That’s who you’re looking into?” Petrov’s face went white as he fumbled for and then fell into a chair.
“Yes. Yes.” Ice got up and went around the other side of the table to retrieve his laptop from the floor. The screen was dark and had a huge crack down the middle of it. Setting it on the table, Ice tried turning it on. “Pachinko is quite an interesting character if you take the time to study him. He’s been annoyed with me for years, ever since I killed off his entire enforcer squad while he was in the bathroom. He never really made it as an assassin because he always leaves his calling card on every job. A single rose bud. Everybody knows about it – the police, Interpol and every other would-be assassin. It’s his big ego that always gets him caught in the end. And I’ll catch him this time too.”
“You’re wasting your time going after Pachinko.”
Ice looked up to see Petrov had regained his color and was sitting with his arms folded across his chest. “You don’t need to worry about me, brother. Honestly, the mob and I aren’t strangers.”
“I’m caring less about you with every passing minute. I can’t believe with all your connections, how you don’t know this. Pachinko Ruble was killed in a riot in the Moscow secure facility for paranormals three months ago.”
Ice froze. How did I not know that? “That can’t be right. No one leaves a rosebud at a scene like he does.”
“You said yourself, everyone in your circle of criminal elements knows the rosebud was Pachinko’s calling card. Pachinko is dead. The Moscow government were so pleased when it happened, they broadcast the burning of his corpse in the middle of the prison along with the guy that killed him. It was even on YouTube for a bit before activists against shifter violence made the company take it down.”
Ice’s knees threatened to give out and he quickly took a seat before he embarrassed himself. “I’ve been betrayed,” he whispered. “I can’t believe it. After all these years, someone’s been deliberately feeding me misinformation.” Immediately, his mind started thinking of ways to get back at Nikita. It couldn’t have been anyone else. She was the one who sent him the information about Pachinko when he asked for it. Information that blatantly didn’t include the most pertinent fact of all – that the man was dead.
“What about your mate?” Petrov slapped the table in front of him.
“Well, yes, I suppose I can rescue him too, but you’ve got to understand these things take time. I have to go back over every transaction I’ve been through, there’s no telling what else has been meddled with. I’ve got to set up new accounts and shift all my money around, because the fates know that money is at the root of all evil. Shit, my business mergers. I’d better ensure there is no unexplained transactions going on there, either. And then I need to get proof – proof that this person, and I’m damn sure it’s her or someone working with her has been setting me up, before I can confront her…”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Ice wasn’t keen on being grabbed by the front of his shirt and hauled to his feet. Seriously, Ice was making a firm mental note not to even speak to his brother before he’d had coffee. “Byron could be dead by then. You remember Byron, don’t you? Tall, lovely shoulders, long neck, slim waist and an ass worth worshipping. Has black hair and moody pale green eyes that can see right through anyone’s bullshit. Smells better than a million bucks. The one the fates decreed was your mate. He will die!”
It’d been a long time since Ice had thought of Byron as anything more than the dragon waiting for him to move into retirement. But as his brother did his best to smash his windpipe with his knuckles, Ice did remember that description and other things. The full lips that never seemed to smile, the ears that hugged his head and seemed perfectly uniform. The long straight nose without a single blemish on it and the scruff that was so like his own, except Ice’s was blond whenever he let it grow out. The mate he’d never spoken to, the mate he hadn’t touched.
Suddenly, Ice was hit with a pain so acute, he almost buckled completely – pain shooting through his heart and hitting the top of his head, the ends of his fingers and even his toes. As it was, he gasped, frantically fighting his brother off just so he could breathe. His animal sides had gotten together and ganged up on him, hitting him with a bunch of feels he didn’t know how to process. My mate’s gone. Someone took my mate, and to his shock, tears started pouring down his face. He swiped at his cheeks – stunned that his fingers came away wet. Looking over at his brother, he said, “What the hell is happening to me?”
“Finally,” Petrov said, walking over and pulling two cups from the rack, before picking up the coffee pot. “The Ice King’s heart finally cracks open.”
“This isn’t funny.” Ice wiped his face again, but his eyes hadn’t stopped leaking. “I never cry, ever. Not when mom threw me out of the house, not when my s
tepfather beat me so bad, I couldn’t move for a week. Not once in the years I was bullied and ignored interchangeably by the Sellivik family, did I let them see me cry. I didn’t cry over my first kill, and I’ve never shed a tear since. I protected myself, the only way I knew how, and now… now… my mate’s gone, and… and…”
“There is no and.” Petrov came back and set a cup in front of his brother. “Your mate is gone and that is the only thing you need to be worrying about. Now, how are you going to get him back?”
How indeed. That’s what I need. I need a plan. Plans work. They always have. Ice sat down again, conscious of his duel animal nature monitoring his every move. “You said Dirk’s gone to Europe?”
“He’s got to deal with issues with his mother, but then yes, the enforcers are going to help track Byron along with some vampires and wolf shifters. Raoul from San Jose is calling in a favor from his pals in the European coven – they are all meeting up in Munich around two PM today, or so the receptionist told me.”
“Good work. If we can be on the plane within thirty minutes, we’ll probably beat them there.” Ice skulled the contents of the coffee cup, ignoring how the liquid burned his tongue. The pain in his gut was ten times worse, and he would deal with that too, just like he always had.
“Munich is a big place,” Petrov said, even as he put the cups in the sink and pulled his car keys off the hook by the door.
“I’ll fucking fly over the whole city if I have to,” Ice said grimly. “My animal sides have been fighting me on this for so long, let’s see what happens when I finally give them free rein to find our mate.”
“It’s probably a trap,” Petrov warned.
“Of course, it’s a trap, but it won’t be in Munich. Not yet. All the information I’ve been given told me to go looking for him in the rural farms outside of Paris.”
“Someone really does want you dead.”
“They’ll be shit out of luck today.”
Chapter Twelve
“You saw a door, ergo, there must be a door. We couldn’t have gotten in here without one.” Byron pulled at the steel legs on the cradle that had been holding up the glass coffin. The coffin itself was already smashed into a million pieces, but with Dancer getting edgy the longer they were confined, and as Byron wasn’t feeling much better about it himself, he was determined to do something about it. “This bloody thing is heavy in one piece. Can you melt the bolts or something? Just a leg of this will do.”
You should probably be conserving your energy, Dancer said as a yellow stream of flames came out of Byron’s mouth, melting the steel join in the frame legs. Now the air vent is blocked, we have no idea how much oxygen you have left.
“I’m sure some scientist somewhere would have the perfect formula for working it out.” Byron wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. His jacket had been abandoned long ago, although he’d put his belt back on. “The way I figure it, we just melted the plastic on the vent, so if we jiggle it a bit…” He reached up, extending his arm as far as it would go, using the steel leg he held, to poke at the melted mess. “It all comes crumbling down.” Byron stepped back as the black plastic fell to the floor. Immediately, he felt a rush of cool air coming in from the outside.
Outside? “Hey, look at this,” Byron stood under the hole he’d just created, looking straight up. “Is that sky?”
It looks like it, but then that’s not helpful, unless we see a dragon fly over it. All I can smell coming from there is grass.
“Do you need to go back to the dream realm, Dancer?” Byron was getting concerned about his dragon. He seemed distracted.
It doesn’t help seeing sky. I’d feel a lot better if we could be flying up there, instead of stuck in here. But I’m not leaving you alone here.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Byron said, swinging the steel bar he had against the corner seam of his crate. “I’m also pissed off.” He took another swing – the noise was incredibly loud, but anything was better than laughter.
“I’m mad because I’ve been taken through no fault of my fucking own.” Swing. Bash.
“I’m mad because some psycho thought engraving a fucking rose bud on my coffin made it seem less sick.” Swing. Double crash.
“I’m especially angry at myself, because I didn’t listen to you, I didn’t chase down our mate as hard as I should have done, and you know why?” Swing. Crash. Bang – the steel lining on the crate buckled this time.
“I didn’t follow it up, because I was scared,” Byron yelled, swinging once, twice, and then a third time. “I was scared of not being enough. Scared of not being wanted even by my mate. SCARED!”
Fury fueling his muscles, Byron swung that steel pipe again and again, the metal clanging ringing in his ears as the dent and then a rip in the steel-clad walls widened.
“I don’t want to be scared.” Byron fell to the floor, tears and sweat pouring down his face. “I want to be cared for. No, not even that. I want to be loved the way I deserve. I want my mate to accept us just the way we are.”
Er… you might get your wish. Dancer sounded perkier and that made Byron sit up enough to peer through the small hole he’d made in the wall. There’s another dragon out there and he’s getting closer.
“One of our clan?” Byron pressed as close to the jagged edges of the hole as far as he dared, but he couldn’t see anything.
He’s not a fire dragon, he’s an ice dragon, and he’s got a wolf spirit in him as well. And he’s carrying another wolf on his back. Byron, he’s our mate.
“The half dragon or the wolf?”
The ice dragon. He’s ours.
“You can tell that from here?” What a stupid question. Of course, Dancer will know. “Where’s our clan? Where’s Dirk?”
Still back at your mother’s house. She’s being stubborn.
“Another parent who probably wants me dead just to prove a point to Dirk. Fine.” Byron looked down at his sweaty rumpled clothing. His tie was off; nothing was ever going to save his shirt or suit. Even the leather on his shoes were nicked from the broken glass. Perfect mate meeting attire - not. But the time for worrying about petty minor details that he’d believed gave him some sort of control over his life was over. “We’ll keep freaking whacking at this hole until my mate comes up with a better idea.”
/~/~/~/~/
“Holy shit, if Byron’s in that box, someone really intended for your mate to die out here.” Petrov whistled and Ice echoed the sentiment even though he couldn’t say anything.
The flight around Munich hadn’t yielded anything, but Ice’s dragon half had gotten insistent that they widen the search to more rural grounds. Following his dragon’s hunch, because he didn’t have anything else to go on, Ice was shocked after travelling no more than ten miles as the crow flew, to see a huge field, barren except for something that looked like a steel crate. A steel crate that had walls that wobbled every time someone hit it – from the inside.
But it wasn’t the staged scene that took Ice’s breath away as he swooped around and headed for the ground. It was the sheer strength of his animal halves, pushing for him to move quicker, their urgency sending his own pulse racing. My dragon’s already communicating with Byron’s. How the hell is this possible?
Barely waiting for Petrov to get off his back, Ice shifted, complete with clothes, striding towards the buckled corner of the crate. “Are you all right in there?” he yelled, leaning down to see if he could peer in the hole Byron had made in the metal.
“I will be when I can get out of this goddamned coffin box.”
Ice winced as the sound of metal being hit rang around the field. “My dragon can probably claw this away,” he offered, unwilling to listen to another strike. Goodness knows how long it would take for Byron to hit his way out. “Can you move out of the way?”
“You don’t need your damn dragon to do everything,” Petrov came running over, the claws at the ends of his fingers making them seem elongated and out of shape. “Don’t keep unde
restimating your wolfen heritage. Step aside.”
“Petrov? Is that you?” Byron’s voice came from inside the tomb, and Ice was under no doubts that was the box’s original purpose. “Did Dirk send you? Is he on his way?”
“Mr. Hollingsworth didn’t send me, no.” Petrov stripped off his shirt and flexed his muscles. “Someone told him I had something to do with your abduction. I didn’t, but I managed to convince your mate to come and rescue you. Now, please stand back. Your mate’s known as a ruthless killer on all five continents and a hundred other countries besides. I do not want him killing me because you got a scratch.”
Ice could’ve killed Petrov then, especially when he heard Byron’s whisper, “My mate’s a killer?” But it seemed Byron wasn’t one to let a little thing like that bother him. “That doesn’t explain why you’re here Petrov and how you know my mate.”
“Mr. Hollingsworth, please. Isn’t it more important to get you out first?” Petrov looked like he’d sucked a lemon. But as the silence stretched on, he said, “Fine. Your mate is my brother, well, half-brother technically. We share the same mother.”
“I see.” Actually, Ice knew Byron couldn’t see because he was still in that damned box, but he knew he should be pleased Byron was being so cautious. “And tell me, one of you, how long have you known the ice dragon and I are meant to be true mates?”
