by Shéa MacLoed
"Drago?" A pale face turned toward me.
"Oh my gods, Inigo." He was so much thinner than I remembered. Almost fragile-looking. But he was alive. Oh, dear gods, he was alive.
With a squeal of joy, I jumped on the bed and wrapped my arms around him, peppering his face with kisses. It took me a while to realize he wasn't kissing me back. In fact, his whole body was rigid.
"Inigo?" I backed away but kept my hands on his shoulders, reluctant to let him go entirely. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"Nothing. I'm fine." But his voice was stiff.
I withdrew my hands from his shoulders, feeling suddenly awkward. "You're acting like I'm a stranger. Don't you know who I am?"
"Of course. Morgan." But the words were cool and indifferent. "Thank you for coming, but I'm tired. I'd like to sleep now." And with that he rolled over and turned his back to me, leaving me staring at him in the dark.
Chapter Two
My cell phone rang as I stepped out into the hallway. I didn't want to take it, but my screen told me it was Kabita. With a quick glance in my direction, Dalinda bustled back into Inigo's room. Maybe she was worried I was going to have a mental breakdown or something. Drago touched my arm lightly before joining her, shutting the door to give me some privacy.
"Hi, Kabita."
"What's wrong?"
Crap. I might have known she'd hear it in my voice. There wasn't much I could get past her. "Nothing. I'm just tired, that's all. Been a long day."
"How's Inigo?"
"He's awake."
"Oh, thank goddess."
I smiled a little. "I know, right?"
"Why are you talking to me, then? Why aren't you with him?"
"He's sleeping," I lied. "I guess that egg thing takes a lot out of you. But he's fine, and that's what matters." It was all that mattered. For now. The rest would come later. I had to believe that. "Are you in Miami?"
"Just landed. Plane leaves for Nassau in a little over an hour. From there I should be able to find out where the ship is and take a helicopter out. I'll call as soon as I find Eddie and figure out what the hell is going on."
"Okay, good. I'm, uh, I should go. Just in case he wakes up."
"Tell him 'hi' from me."
"Will do." Once I figured out what the bloody hell was going on.
Kabita hung up, and I shoved my phone back in my jeans pocket. I dithered in the hallway a minute, not sure what to do. Clearly Inigo didn't want me in his room, but I wanted to know what was going on. I was his girlfriend, after all. I loved him, and he loved me. Or he had before everything had gone to hell in a hand basket, and he'd ended up mostly dead, bleeding out on the high desert.
I was going in, dammit. I started toward the door, but it swung open before I could get to it. Drago stepped out, closing the door behind him. He gave me a long look.
"Come, Morgan. We need to talk."
# # #
"What the hell is going on, Drago?"
We were ensconced in what could only be described as Drago's man cave. Except, of course, it was far more extravagant than any man cave I'd ever seen. Tall arched windows rose gracefully toward the high ceiling, filling the space with light. Between the half dozen windows, every square inch of wall space was covered in bookshelves crammed with leather-bound volumes, some of them quite old. The only wall that wasn't covered was a large rectangle above the massive stone fireplace where he'd hung an enormous flat screen television. The thing looked completely out of place for the old castle and yet totally in keeping with a man cave.
Around the fireplace was gathered a collection of plush leather couches and chairs interspersed with small tables for holding beverages and snacks. There was even one of those cool globes that was really a bar. Drago struck me as a whisky man. The other side of the room was taken over by a massive desk of some kind of dark wood, richly stained and intricately carved with depictions of—what else?—dragons. It looked like it belonged in a museum.
I lounged in one of the overstuffed chairs by the unlit fire. Drago shoved a glass of something alcoholic in my hand before taking the seat opposite. I gave it a sniff. Port. One of my favorites. Not that I felt much like drinking. Still, I took a small sip to fortify myself.
"Come on, tell me. What is going on?" I repeated.
Drago sighed and took a long swallow of his drink. I'd been right about the whisky. Finally he said, "Inigo woke yesterday a few hours before I called you. He was extremely disoriented at first. Weak. Feverish. I called in Dalinda immediately. At first we weren't sure he'd make it."
My heart gave a painful lurch. I should have been there. "Is this, ah, normal?"
"Not exactly. But like I told you when we put him in the egg, he's only half dragon. His human side made the healing unpredictable. We had no way of knowing how he would respond. In fact, if you will recall, I wasn't sure he'd wake up at all."
I nodded. He had told me, but I'd hoped for the best. It was all I had. "Obviously he made it. Physically anyway."
He gave me a long look. "Yes. Physically he is fine. Weak, perhaps, but he will regain his strength in time and with the proper therapy."
"Mentally he's not fine, is he?" I didn't really need him to answer. I'd seen for myself. But I wanted him to confirm it.
"No. He isn't."
I swallowed another bracing mouthful of port. "What's wrong with him?"
"We're not certain," Drago admitted. "Other than he seems detached from, well, just about everything and everyone. Dalinda is worried that if he does not shake loose from whatever this is, he will begin to physically decline."
"What can we do?"
He shook his head. "I do not know. And neither does Dalinda."
"Surely there is someone who does. Someone who can help. Some magic or something. What about Tanith?" Tanith was my friend Cordelia Nightwing's sister and had once gone by the name Sandra. That was how I'd first met her before she'd joined the dragons full-time as a dragon child. I'd seen her only once since then, but she'd seemed content in her role as mediator between the dragons and Britain's answer to the SRA (Supernatural Regulatory Agency), the human-run MI8. She knew things no normal human could possibly know.
"She has been unable to discern any way of helping him, unfortunately." Drago took another long swallow of his whisky, brooding eyes on the empty fireplace. "And believe me, she has tried until she has exhausted herself. I had to order her to bed and leave my mate to guard her lest she try again."
I'd never met Drago's wife, the dragon queen, but I'd heard stories. If they were even half right, she was one scary-ass woman. Dragon. Whatever.
"Someone has to know what to do." I repeated it like a mantra, wanting it to be true.
Drago glanced at me. "Not that I'm aware of. We've never had a situation like this. Not with a Halfling."
"Yeah, yeah," I muttered. "If he was full dragon you'd know what to do. Blah blah."
He winced a little. "It is, most unfortunately, true."
I stared at Drago. "What can I do?"
"Nothing."
I opened my mouth to argue, but Drago held up his hand.
"Time, Morgan. Give him time. Surely there is work you should be doing? At least until Inigo is ready."
He was right. Of course he was. I was a Hunter, and my job didn't go away because my boyfriend was recovering from having his heart ripped out by the Fairy Queen. "I spoke to Eddie right before you called me."
"And?"
"And right now Eddie is on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and something has gone extremely wrong. He may be in serious danger. Kabita's on the way, but I have no idea what kind of situation she's walking into. She shouldn't go alone."
Drago stood up. "Then we'd better get going, don't you think?"
# # #
"You have got to be kidding me." I eyed Drago's massive form with something surprisingly close to horror. Killing vampires was one thing. Riding dragons was another. Granted, I'd ridden Inigo in dragon form clear across the United St
ates and the Atlantic Ocean, no less. And yes, I'd even suggested riding Finn from the airport, but Drago's dragon form made Inigo's seem downright puny. I squinted against the late afternoon sun bouncing off the dragon king's gold scales. He was the size of a small mountain. "How the hell am I supposed to get on his back? I need a freaking ladder truck."
Finn shrugged. "Easy." He grabbed me around the waist and tossed me up onto Drago's back like I was a rag doll. Unfortunately, I had no idea what I was doing. My hands slipped against smooth scales, and I slid down Drago's side like I was on one of those giant amusement park slides. I had visualized myself crashing to the ground and breaking a leg when Finn snatched me out of midair.
"When I throw you up, take hold of one of his scales," Finn snapped. "Get your fingers underneath it and use it as a handhold."
Without waiting to see if I was ready, he tossed me up again. This time I grabbed hold of one of Drago's plate-like scales, barely managing to avoid sliding off the other side and onto the cobblestone courtyard, possibly landing on my head.
I glared down at Finn. "Next time give me a warning, why don't you?" He shrugged again and ambled back inside the castle. With a sigh, I heaved myself up and onto Drago's back, using his scales to pull myself along. I seated myself just behind his shoulder ridge. Someone had threaded a tether through the scales. Once I snapped myself in, I hollered down at Drago. "Okay. Ready when you are."
If it had been Inigo, he'd have been able to mind speak, but either Drago couldn't do it with me or didn't want to. He let out a large grunt and gathered his haunches beneath him. I felt the thick muscles gather beneath my thighs, the shift and slide of scales, and then in one leap, he was in the air, wings spreading to catch the updraft off the mountainside.
Up he surged, higher and higher into the atmosphere until we were so far above the earth, the thin air turned nearly to ice. Or at least it seemed so to me. Despite my borrowed riding gear, I was turning numb from the cold. Even the thick, fur-lined gloves did little to dispel the chill. I was pretty sure my ears were going to fall off at any moment.
And then the chill was gone, replaced with a tingling warmth. The air grew thicker, easier to breath. I glanced around to see that both Drago and I were surrounded by a shimmering bubble. Inigo had thrown up one of those bubbles, too. Not only did it keep us warm and help us breathe, though Drago didn't need it nearly as much as I did, but it prevented pesky things like airplanes and radar from seeing us. The last thing we needed was the Royal Air Force freaking out about a giant dragon invading their air space. I couldn't even imagine the tabloid response to such a thing.
The other thing the bubble did was allow him to travel at full speed without turning me into a blender full of goo. The flight that should have taken something like fifteen hours by plane only took about two by dragon. My butt was just getting numb when Drago began circling, spiraling down slowly toward the sparkling blue ocean below. As we flew lower, the air grew increasingly humid and hot until I was sweating like a pig under my heavy layers of clothing.
At first I wasn't sure where Drago was headed, but then I saw the tiny little speck of white in the middle of the vast ocean between two tiny green islands. As we drew closer, the ship got bigger and bigger until I could clearly see the helo pad beneath us, rushing up fast. I opened my mouth to warn Drago, but it was too late. He landed with a thump hard enough to send me sliding off his side. Only the tether kept me from slamming into the deck. I dangled in midair for a moment before managing to unclip the tether. I fell the rest of the way to the deck, hitting hard enough to jar bone.
"Holy shit, Drago." I glanced around to see if anyone had seen us. Apparently no one had noticed a giant dragon landing on the ship as everyone was going about their business. I guess Drago still had the bubble up. I staggered to my feet, expecting to find a massive dragon on the deck. Instead he was standing there in human form, dressed in the jeans and cable knit sweater he'd been wearing at the castle.
"Damn, it's warm here," he said, pulling off the sweater to reveal a tight, black T-shirt beneath. Poor thing was stretched to the limit trying to contain his rippling chest muscles. I was kind of glad Inigo hadn't inherited his brother's size. I liked my men on the lean side.
"I thought you liked it warm," I said, shucking my flight clothes. I wished I'd had shorts or something. Boots and jeans weren't exactly meant for the tropics.
"Warm and dry. This humidity is bullshit."
Couldn't argue with him there. "We need to find Kabita, if she's here, and Eddie." I pulled out my cell phone.
He laid his hand on mine. "Won't work until I lower my shields."
What was he? A freaking starship? "Uh, okay. So lower them."
"Not here. Don't you think people would be a bit surprised to suddenly find two strangers standing in their midst?"
Frankly, I doubted it. Most people couldn't see two feet in front of their noses. "Fine." I tucked the heavy flight clothes under my arm, grabbed his hand, and pulled him into a stairwell. "Okay, this ought to be safe enough."
He nodded. There was a slight shimmer in the air. "We can be seen and heard now."
I glanced at my phone, selecting Kabita's number first. There was no answer.
"She may still be on her way," Drago pointed out. "After all, it would have taken her awhile to convince someone to give her the ship's location and then find a means of transport."
He had a point. I dialed Eddie next. Again no answer. I was starting to feel that sick queasiness in the pit of my stomach. I wasn't sure if I should chalk it up to a sudden onset of seasickness or my sixth sense telling me something was wrong. Based on past experience, I was going with the latter. Although I really wished I'd thought to bring along some Dramamine.
"Surely there is someone on board who can tell us where Eddie is staying," Drago suggested.
"The head concierge," I said. "If I can find him. Probably has an office below decks somewhere. Don't you need to get back to the castle?"
"And leave you alone to face the unknown? I don't think so. At least not until Kabita arrives and we discover what is going on. Inigo would have my scales if I let anything happen to you."
I wasn't so sure about that. "Sure. Great."
I admit I was kind of relieved he was sticking around. Normally I didn't mind being on my own, but I'd never been on a cruise ship before, and I had no idea what I was facing. Going in without any sort of backup was just plain stupid. At least I had weapons now. Back at the castle, Drago had loaned me a boot dagger and a wrist sheath knife. He'd then made arrangements for my weapons to be shipped from Paris to the castle with a promise to have Finn deliver them either to me on the ship or to my house in Portland, depending on what went down during our visit.
I had no idea where on earth to begin looking for the concierge, or if the place had a front desk like hotels. Fortunately we came across a map on the wall indicating the location of guest services.
"That's it," I said, tapping the location on the map. "They should be able to tell us how to find Eddie. I hope."
Drago nodded and took off in the direction indicated with me hurrying along in his wake. Dragons had an unerring sense of direction, one that put my inborn Hunter abilities to shame. Although the deck was fairly busy, the crowd seemed to part for Drago with ease. No one appeared conscious of it, but as he approached, people veered away, leaving a clear shot toward his goal: the elevators.
"Did you do that on purpose?" I asked as we stepped on board.
Drago punched the button for the correct deck. "Do what?" He seemed genuinely confused by my question.
"Never mind."
We rode the elevator in silence. It stopped with a ping, and the doors slid open, revealing an enormous lobby with soaring ceilings and marble floors. At one end was a long desk of polished dark wood like in those snazzy hotels. Above one end of the desk was a sign that said Guest Services.
I wasn't sure exactly how to handle this. They'd realize pretty quickly we weren't legitimat
e guests, and it wasn't like we could make up some random excuse for how we'd just happened to wander aboard. All I could do was play my role and hope they didn't ask me any awkward questions.
I strode across the lobby with Drago hot on my heels. The young woman behind the desk looked up at my approach, a pleasant smile plastered on her face. The smile grew wider the minute she spotted Drago. So that was how the land lay. I gave him a subtle nudge in the ribs. He wasn't stupid. He took the hint.
"Fair lady," he said, putting a little extra Highland burr into his voice and giving her a slight bow, "I would beg of you a great favor." I had to refrain from rolling my eyes.
The girl giggled and tittered. "Of course," she gushed. "I am always here to help. What can I do for you?" She eyed him like she might dive across the desk and rip his clothes off. I barely bit back a laugh.
"My sister and I are supposed to meet a friend of ours. However, she has forgotten where we are to meet." He gave her a conspiratorial look that spoke volumes about my supposed mental state. "I was wondering, could you kindly ring his room and ask him?"
There was a courtesy phone not ten steps away. I half expected her to tell him to go use it. Instead, she giggled again and said, "Of course. Do you know his room number?"
"Alas, she left it, in our room, and it is a long hike back."
They exchanged another conspiratorial look. "No worries, sir. It happens. Just give me his name, and I'll look it up for you."
He gave her a wide smile, and I thought she was going to faint dead away. "Eddie Mulligan. Although he may be booked under Edward Mulligan."
She tapped away at her keyboard. "Ah, here he is. Let me call the room." She picked up her phone and dialed. After a moment she hung up. The look she gave Drago was so mournful, I thought she might burst into tears. "I'm so sorry. He's not answering. Would you like me to leave him a message? Or perhaps I could page him?"
I stiffened. Blasting Eddie's name all over the ship was the last thing we needed. It could put him in even more danger.
