by Meg Ripley
“So, I guess that means there aren’t doctors for your kind?” Resa asked gently. She hadn’t taken another bite of her pears, and she watched him with a sad interest.
He looked down to avoid her gaze, staring at his plate but not seeing it. “No, not really. Not for the sort of thing my parents were dealing with. Most of the time, we don’t even need them. But Brandon just slipped away one morning, and there was nothing that any of us could do about it.” He wished he could erase the image of his mother crying over his brother’s frail body, but it was one that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
“I know it isn’t really any of my business, but what would have been so bad about someone finding out he was a dragon? Or couldn’t your parents have paid a doctor to treat him privately and keep their secret?”
Ethan gave a small snort of a laugh. “That sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But there’s another part of the equation you probably don’t know about. My people have been hunted for centuries, and there was a clan of hunters in hot pursuit of my family when I was growing up. If Brandon had shifted and the wrong person found out about it, we would have all been dead in a matter of days. My parents had to let him die in order to protect me.” He shoved the pears away from him. The plate clattered against his wine glass and threatened to tip it over, but it wobbled and was steady once again. “Those hunters and the ones like them are still out there, looking for me and for the others.”
“Oh.” Resa folded her hands in her lap, suddenly meek and demure. It was a stark contrast to her normal attitude. “That’s why you care so much about what the public knows about dragons. Whatever information is out there might be used to track you down. If I—oh, God.”
“What?”
Her hand was at her mouth, her eyes wide. “If I had managed to see you as a dragon and gotten away, I would have exposed you to anyone who would have listened. I would have gotten you killed.”
She looked so innocent, and he longed to reach across the table, take her hand, and tell her that it wasn’t her problem. But she was right. “Unfortunately, yes. A vast percentage of the population wouldn’t have believed you, but the hunters are constantly looking for someone to confirm what they already know. They just need someone to point them in the right direction, and they can pick us all off one by one.”
“But can’t you do anything about them? Can’t you just go…I don’t know…kill them or something? I mean, I saw your claws.”
“The hunters might be human, but they spend all their spare time developing weapons to be used against us. It seems also that there are far more of them than there are of us, since nobody is hunting them down and killing them. Trust me, I’d love to go after them. I even have a connection who knows where to find them, but I’ve been told to stay out of it. We don’t know exactly how many of them there are, or what they’re plotting, or even what they know about us. It’s too risky, just like it was with my brother.” Now Ethan could understand the odd way Resa had been acting after she’d told him her tale of the dragon in the woods. He hadn’t talked to anyone about his brother in ages. His parents had refused to allow the subject, and he hadn’t wanted any of the Darkbloods to see his vulnerable side. It felt strange to tell her, but good.
“Ethan, I’m so sorry.” Resa’s eyes glittered with tears. She got up and came slowly around the table to stand before him. He stood as well, uncertain of what to expect next. “I had no idea. I just wanted to find the truth, but I didn’t know how hurtful that truth could be. I’ll erase my entire blog if you’d like. I suppose you can even do it for me, if you don’t trust me. Thank you for dinner; I’ll be in my room.” With that, she dashed off through the house.
His body felt as though it was made of stone. He should have gotten up to lock her door, but he couldn’t. There were dishes to be washed, but they could wait. Every ounce of energy had been drained from his body, and he no longer knew what he needed to do. Ethan thought of his brother, of his parents, of how many shifters had died trying to protect their secret. Yet it was Resa he felt most troubled over. She had been an innocent bystander until yesterday, and Ethan had only made the situation worse.
When he finally rose and headed down the hall, he paused outside her door. He could hear a faint noise from inside that could have either been the sound of her weeping, or trying to escape. Either way, he didn’t have the strength to deal with it, so he continued on down the hallway without locking her door.
19
Resa had never been to jail, but it was easy to imagine that this was the most luxurious cell she ever could have found herself in. When Ethan had first brought her here, there had been little point in trying to escape because she wanted to use the time to find out the truth about him and use it to advance her writing career in whatever form would work. Now, she only wanted to leave because she finally understood what was at stake.
Would Ethan ever let her go? And if he did, what would she do with herself? Somehow, the idea of being a writer had always hinged on having that one great story to tell about her contact with a dragon. Though she’d always known it was real in her heart, it was a completely different thing to have the evidence just on the other side of the door.
Dragons were absolutely real.
But what sort of life would she return to if she did get to leave Ethan’s opulent home? She couldn’t in good conscience continue her blog. Instead, Resa would be relegated to writing mundane reports of the real world just as people wanted it to be, where people were nothing more than humans. Even if she could find a way to be satisfied with that, she would never be the same again.
The books on the shelves no longer called to her. They held numerous stories of dragons, but none of them compared to what she had seen either as a child or on the roof of Cobalt Computers. Resa had seen a real dragon, had even had dinner with him; everything else was pale in comparison.
It was those damn hunters that made everything so complicated, and she had unknowingly been supporting them. There was little doubt in her mind that some of her followers were likely hunters themselves, just waiting for her to give them the right hint that would lead them directly to Ethan’s lair.
Sometime in the night she had drifted off, and when she woke, it felt as though she had been asleep for days. She had wasted too much time lying around in this room and thinking she had a purpose in discovering who Ethan really was and what she would do with the information.
With a sudden idea that pushed her right off the bed and propelled her to the door, Resa scrubbed the dried tears from her face with her shirt sleeve and tried the handle. To her surprise, it turned under her grip and the door swung open soundlessly. She stepped out into the hallway, the silence of the house surrounding her, and for a moment, she had to wonder if it was a trap. Ethan was too careful of a man to just let her walk out of the house. But that didn’t matter, because she didn’t plan to go anywhere.
Because she knew the dining room lay down the hall to the right, Resa turned left. She wished she had more time to stop and look at the framed canvases that hung from the walls or the beautiful woodwork that surrounded each doorway, but the idea inside her was one that drove her even more than any story premise that she’d had. There would be time for scrutiny and details later. This wasn’t a time for reading, writing, and analyzing. Resa had to act.
Peering through a wide doorway, she found Ethan in a room that could only be described as a library. It fit the theme of his house, with a massive stone fireplace on one side and leather couches with a distressed finish. Ethan was standing in front of a large window on the opposite side of the room from the door, his hands folded behind his back as he stared out over his property. The rising sun limned his muscled body, setting fire to his golden-brown hair and squeezing her heart.
“Yes?”
She jumped back, not having expected him to hear her coming.
He heard her gasp and turned around, his face looking somber and pale. “I might look like any other man, but I have excel
lent hearing. I knew the moment you came out of your room.”
Resa noticed he was wearing the same clothes he’d had on at dinner the night before. “Haven’t you gone to bed?”
“Did you come find me just to check on my sleeping habits?” he asked as he turned away from the window. “I guess that’s just another piece of the puzzle, though, isn’t it? Something your readers will want to know?”
“Don’t make me out to be the bad guy here.” He had a way of pushing her buttons with very little effort, and it exasperated her. “I have an idea for something that might help you.”
“Resa,” he said softly as he let out a breath. It was the first time she’d really heard him say her name, and she didn’t want to acknowledge the shiver of pleasure it sent down her spine. “There’s nothing you can do to help me.”
“I know, I know,” she said, agitated at his instant refusal. “I’m just a simple human and I can’t possibly understand what you go through. Fine. But just listen. I can go to the hunters for you. I’ll tell them that I’m trying to find dragons and that I want to work with them.”
“And what good is that going to do me?” He looked at her with pity in his eyes.
It only made her more determined to make him listen. “Maybe nothing, but I also might be able to gather some information on them. I can find out where they’re at and how many there are. I can get in on their plans and pass them along to you. You’ll know how much they know about dragons and if they’re plotting anything.”
Ethan turned back toward the window. “What makes you think they’ll let you in and give you that kind of intelligence? The urge to hunt is usually passed down from generation to generation, just like dragon blood. Why would they trust you?”
“You said the presence of dragons in the media is partly what keeps the hunters going, and where they get their leads,” Resa reasoned as she moved across the room toward him. “That means the chances are likely that some of them follow my blog. They’ll know I’ve been looking for dragons for a long time. Why shouldn’t they let me in?”
“And then what?” The sun shone in his pale eyes, reducing his pupils to pinpoints.
Resa flung her hands in the air. “I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter, I guess. I’m just trying to think of something I can do to make it up to you, but I’m not sure why I bother. You’re impossible to please, Ethan, and that’s a much bigger flaw than being a dragon.” She turned on her heel and stomped toward the door.
“Wait.”
One word from him and she was frozen, which only pissed her off more. Why hadn’t she just walked out the front door when she’d come out of her room?
“What?”
“You understand that this is dangerous, right? That these people aren’t just another story for you to investigate? They’re very serious about what they do.”
A smile curved her cheek. “That’s precisely what makes them interesting.”
Ethan stepped away from the window and came slowly toward her. His hands were still behind his back, his eyes wild as he thought. “I don’t like the idea of putting you deliberately in harm’s way, but I could put a wiretap on you. And it would be a way to do something about the hunters without actually going after them. That might satisfy the others, and I could take the information back to Mr. Cross and see if I can urge him to act.”
“Who’s Mr. Cross?” This was a name he hadn’t mentioned before. Without thinking about it, she was slipping into reporter-mode again. She wanted to know all the facts.
“Nobody important,” he said. “At least, not right now. I think I can make this work with the equipment that I have here, otherwise I’ll need to get you to my office. Of course, we’ll have to make sure nobody sees you.” Something had taken over him, a drive that animated his body in a way that Resa hadn’t seen before. He was like a crazy professor on the verge of a scientific breakthrough, but he was a sexy one.
“I don’t think that would be much of a problem.” She smiled as she thought about how easy it had been to stay in the Cobalt Computers building. For a place with so much tech, it was surprising that she hadn’t been detected. Maybe all of this was meant to be. She had to believe there was something more to it than pure coincidence, or else what she was getting ready to do was just insane.
“Come with me.” Ethan took her by the elbow and escorted her through the house, but he was much gentler this time. “I’ll need a little time to talk to my connection to the hunters. I had proposed a similar idea to him and he didn’t like it, but that was before you were part of the picture. I can only hope that he’s willing to cooperate with me and tell me where to send you; otherwise, there’s no point in any of this. But first, you’ll be the test subject for some spyware I’ve been working on.”
They went through a plain door at the end of the hall and down a set of stairs to a finished basement. As Resa had guessed, this lower level was still much nicer than any basement she had been in before. Walking through an entertainment room with built-in cabinets and a custom bar, they reached another plain door. This one had a keypad near the handle.
Ethan reached out for it, but he turned to her first. “You mind?”
Resa rolled her eyes and turned away. “It’s nice to know you finally trust me,” she scoffed. She could hear the beeps of the keys as he pushed them, followed by the grinding sound of the tumblers unlocking.
“You’re still a reporter, Resa. Even my top engineers don’t know about this place. I admit it would be rather handy if they did, since some of them are better at this than I am, but every man has to have his secrets.”
He opened the door and led her inside, and Resa let out a low whistle. A long counter lined the right side of the room, covered in computers, wires, and several other devices that she didn’t recognize. The left side of the room was lined with white markerboards, and someone had scribbled equations and drawings over the entire expanse of them. The electric smell of new plastic was thick in the air, and a gentle hum vibrated in the background. It was far more modern than anything she had seen in the rest of the house.
“What exactly do you do in here?”
“Anything I want, really. But I’ve worked on secret government contracts as well as side projects I’m interested in.” He headed across the room and pulled a drawer out of a metal-topped desk. He spoke as he dug through it. “I think some elements left over from past projects should work for a discreet surveillance system you can wear on your body. Ideally, I can monitor your vitals as well as audio and visual.”
“Why would you need to do that?” It sounded so intimate, and a little scary.
Ethan stopped what he was doing and stood up to look at her. “Resa, I wasn’t kidding when I said this was dangerous. I’m basically sending you into a den of murderers. If I’m going to be sitting on the outside, then I want to know everything that’s happening in there.”
She nodded, wondering exactly what she had gotten herself into. “Okay. Just tell me what I need to do.”
“Right now, it’s about what I need to do. Give me a minute to refigure some wiring and run a few tests.” He flicked a switch on a soldering iron and selected a roll of wire from a shelf on the wall.
Resa found a stool and sat down. This was all so surreal. Only two days ago, she had been ready to recreate her writing career, to dedicate herself to the serious work of being a journalist and making a name for herself as something other than a fantasy blogger. But she had found a dragon on a rooftop, and she was now so far past the paper, so far past her blog, that she didn’t know how she would ever be able to look back and take any of it seriously again. There were things in life that were much bigger. If things didn’t go as planned with the hunters, she would never have the chance to write another word.
“Okay.” Ethan turned on his stool and showed her a tiny black dot on the tip of his finger, rolling close to her so that they sat knee-to-knee. “I think we’re ready to try it.”
Resa frowned at the tiny device. “Ho
w did you manage to put any wires in that?”
“I didn’t.” He pointed to a different gadget on the counter. It was a couple of inches high and connected to a laptop with a USB cable. “It was the receiver that needed some work. Um…” He scratched his head and his face flushed. “I’m going to need you to take off your shirt.”
Her own cheeks heated at the idea. She had made use of the shower in the luxurious bathroom attached to her room, but she still wasn’t prepared to disrobe in front of the handsome tech mogul. “I don’t suppose it’s the kind of thing I can just put on myself.”
Ethan had the decency to busy himself with the computer. “Not really. I have to make sure it’s done right. It won’t take long, I promise, and then we can move on.”
She swallowed and nodded, reaching for the buttons on her blouse. Her fingers moved quickly, ready to get this over with as soon as possible. Ethan kept his face toward the computer screen until she was finished. When he turned to her, his eyes darted to her chest and immediately back to her face. “This device,” he said through tight lips, “is what will measure your heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration. It has to be put in just the right spot, otherwise it won’t work. This adhesive will keep it on for at least several days, but it shouldn’t irritate your skin.” He picked up a tiny tube and put a drop of clear liquid on the little apparatus.
