Hidden Embers

by Tessa Adams

  Instead of arguing, Quinn backed off—as much as he was able. Let his clenched hands open, forced his claws back under the surface, tried to calm his breathing. It wasn’t much, but it seemed to reassure Dylan, whose shoulders relaxed even as he kept himself between his mate and his best friend.

  “I’m not leaving.” His voice was much harsher than usual, weighed down by too much loss and too many years of failure.

  “Of course you’re not,” Phoebe soothed, as she rinsed out the bloody rag a second time before moving back to the body.

  Back to Michael.

  Quinn and Phoebe both knew the nurses could have done this—it was their job, after all. In fact, two were currently hovering at the door, waiting to be called in. Normally Samantha, the older of the two, would have come in and demanded to take over, even without Quinn’s instructing her to do so. But Dylan’s presence must have intimidated her because she simply watched and waited instead.

  As he observed, Quinn told himself he should stop her. Phoebe administering to the body. She had a PhD in biochemistry from Yale and a medical degree from Stanford—this should have been beneath her. But she was doing it for him. Even as the rage ate him from the inside, he recognized that—and tried to keep the dragon under control. She didn’t deserve to have his fury, his utter and complete hopelessness, leak onto her. Not when she was only trying to help.

  Silence stretched between the three of them, tense and forbidding and overwhelming. He closed his eyes and imagined killing everyone involved in the creation of this virus, imagined ripping them open with a quick strike of his talons and then leaving them to bleed out as Michael had done.

  As so many Dragonstars had done.

  For years now, this virus had ravaged his people. The first case had shown up a few decades before, but it hadn’t spread, and while he’d saved samples for research, Quinn and the other clan doctors had considered it nothing but a bizarre anomaly. At least until it resurfaced a decade ago, spreading and killing off clan members in larger and larger numbers. By the time they’d started to take it seriously, to understand that a disease could actually bring down the normally impervious dragons, it had been too late. The thing had gotten a stranglehold on the clan.

  Even then, as he’d fought the thing day and night, Quinn hadn’t realized what it had taken Phoebe only a few weeks to pick up on—that the disease had been manufactured specifically to attack the Dragonstars. That it had been created to bring the clan to its knees.

  The Wyvernmoons were the likely suspects—how could they not be, as they’d spent centuries attacking the Dragonstars? A brutal clan with little money and almost no status among the four dragon communities in North America, the Wyverns wanted the land, resources and power that the Dragonstars had—badly enough to kill for it. Badly enough to die for it, as any head-on attack was met with brutal force by Dylan.

  But this disease, this insidious little virus, was doing what centuries of fighting couldn’t, and if it continued at this rate, their clan would be nothing more than an empty shell, one that was ripe for conquering.

  The loss of his brother combined with his rage at the Wyvernmoons ate at his control, making matters worse until Phoebe finally spoke.

  “I want to call someone. I have a friend who works for the CDC in the infectious diseases department and specializes in fast-working hemorrhagic viruses. I think she might be able to see something that we’ve missed.”

  Quinn stiffened as an instinctive protest rose within him. He didn’t want someone else in his lab—anyone else, let alone another human woman. It had been hard enough for his beast to accept Phoebe’s constant presence when she’d first arrived—dragons were territorial, and the lab, not to mention the health of his people, had been Quinn’s exclusive responsibility for as long as he could remember.

  Eventually, his dragon had accepted Phoebe because she was a brilliant scientist, and, even more important, because of her relationship with Dylan. But bringing someone else in—someone who didn’t have ties to the clan—was out of the question.

  He looked to Dylan for support, certain that his king would feel the same way. After all, their clan—and all the dragon shifters, for that matter—had survived for millennia by keeping their presence shrouded in secrecy. The idea that they should bring yet another human into their confidence was as laughable as it was impossible.

  But Dylan didn’t immediately shoot down Phoebe’s suggestion. Instead, he seemed to be mulling it over, something Quinn couldn’t understand.

  “Are you insane?” Quinn demanded. “You want to bring the CDC in? They’ll be all over this in seconds, and we’ll all end up in government labs somewhere.”

  “I didn’t say we’d bring in the entire CDC,” Phoebe told him quietly. “Just Dr. Kane.”

  “Like that’s an improvement? You bring one, you bring them all, Phoebe. You know that as well as I do.”

  Dylan growled low in his throat. It was a definite reprimand for how Quinn was speaking to his future queen. It was also a threat, but he was too pissed off to care. Besides, theirs wasn’t a clan that stood on ceremony.

  “It’s a stupid idea, Dylan, and if you weren’t blinded by your feelings for her, you would know that. Yes, you brought Phoebe in and it worked out pretty well, but then again, she turned out to be a dragon. How many humans are you going to let in on this? Sure, we could use a specialist in hemorrhagic viruses, but I’m learning as much as I can about them as fast as I can.”

  “Reading doesn’t substitute for experience, Quinn.” Phoebe’s voice was soft and reasonable, a direct contrast to the violent emotions ripping through him. “If it did, you never would have agreed to let Dylan bring me here.”

  “He didn’t.” Dylan’s voice cut through the tension. “I did it against his will, against the will of most of my sentries. Part of the reason he’s arguing so hard now is because he knows that if I think it’s the right thing to do, I’ll do it again—with or without his approval.”

  “Fuck you, Dylan.” The rage was a living thing inside of Quinn now, tearing into him from all directions. He focused on it, used it. Anger was much better than the grief and helplessness that lay right beneath it. “You aren’t always right—you just think you are.”

  Dylan’s laugh was anything but amused. “How many people have you lost to this damn disease, Quinn? How much time has passed since we first found it? No matter how hard you work—how hard Phoebe works—we’re still empty-handed.” He paused, ran a frustrated hand through his long black hair. “I would think you, of all people, would be interested in pursuing every avenue possible. But if you’ve got a better suggestion, then please let me hear it.”

  Quinn’s silence said more than he wanted, but Dylan didn’t rub it in. He wasn’t that kind of king—or friend. Instead, he spread his arms wide and said, “Look, we can’t keep losing people, not in these numbers. Not if we want to survive. We’ve already tried raiding the Wyvernmoons, looking for the doctors that created this thing, but we’ve had no luck so far. And after we burned half the compound to get Phoebe out last month, they’re locked down tighter than ever.”

  Dylan’s voice smoldered with leftover anger that his enemies had dared take his mate in an effort to weaken him. But he didn’t let it distract him—proof that he was slowly getting over the ordeal that had nearly ripped him apart a few short weeks before. Quinn could admire him for it, even as he disagreed with the decision he knew was coming.

  “You and Phoebe are making advances, no doubt about it. But you’re too slow.”

  Quinn protested, “You can’t rush science, Dylan. Avenues have to be explored, hypotheses made.”

  “Believe me, I understand that. Which is why I think that the more people we have exploring those avenues, the better the chance we have at solving this thing.”

  “More isn’t always better. Bringing in another human—especially one connected to the CDC—isn’t the answer. Can’t you both see how risky that is?”

  “What’s risk
y is allowing this to go on, Quinn.” Phoebe paused from cleaning up Michael long enough to turn to him. “The clan is dying. This virus isn’t picking out the weak, the sick, the submissive. It’s preying on the strongest, most vital members of the community—as if it was designed to do just that. How many more people have to die before you acknowledge that we can’t do this alone?”

  Her words felt like fists plowing into him, but he was nowhere close to conceding defeat. “You don’t know that. More hands could just ruin everything.”

  “I do know it. Because I’ve been in the lab with you every day since I got here. I know your strengths and weaknesses almost as well as I know my own. The way this thing changes in different people’s bloodstreams is amazing, and unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. We need someone who knows more about blood than we do if we want to stand a chance against it.”

  Phoebe’s face revealed her bewilderment with the disease and her determination to beat it. Quinn stared at her for long seconds, tried to remember what it felt like to be so confident, so sure of one’s course of action. But Michael’s death had shattered him, left him reeling and without direction. Despite that—or maybe because of it—he just couldn’t see his way clear to bringing yet another scientist into his lab.

  “But how do you know you can trust her?” he demanded. “I thought the CDC was bound by law and protocol to report infectious diseases?”

  “Absolutely. But then, so was I, yet here we are.”

  “You didn’t work for the Centers for Disease Control—in the infectious diseases department!” Quinn thrust a hand through his hair in frustration, felt his beast straining against the chains he bound it with. How could Phoebe—and Dylan—really be considering trusting a woman who spent her life conforming to regulations?

  “You’re right. But so am I. Dr. Kane is different from most scientists. She has a truly open mind and a tendency to look at rules more as suggestions—especially when they pertain to her. She gets into trouble over it pretty often.”

  “And yet the CDC keeps her?” Quinn had a hard time imagining that. He didn’t have a lot of experience with the Atlanta-based agency, but he knew enough about them to know that they took policies and procedures very seriously.

  “I told you. She’s brilliant at what she does.” Phoebe glanced at him appealingly, but he refused to be swayed. Not when everything he’d worked for, everything his entire clan had worked for, was at risk. “The CDC puts up with her because they don’t have anyone else who can do what she can—in the most primitive conditions imaginable.”

  “If she disregards their rules, she’s more than likely to disregard ours, as well. What’s to keep her from telling the world about us?” Quinn addressed his question to Dylan, who was looking as uncomfortable as Quinn about Phoebe’s defense of her friend.

  “Because she’s incredibly steadfast when she believes in something, and will work herself into the ground to find a solution even when no one else can. She’s exactly who we need on this case, Quinn. Trust me. I promise you, she won’t betray us.”

  Phoebe reached out a hand to touch him—to soothe him—but he shrugged her off. Arguing, he could handle. Sympathy would only make him lose control. Already he could feel the rage and pain eating away at his control. He struggled to keep it together for just a little bit longer. “It’s not you I don’t trust,” Quinn said in a voice that was way too close to a growl. “And you can’t possibly promise that. Besides, if she’s as brilliant as you say she is, how is she available to do this for us?”

  “She was injured during her last assignment. Badly enough that she was flown back to the States and has had four operations in the last seven weeks. She’s better now—or so she says—but still on medical leave.”

  Quinn absorbed what Phoebe was saying—and what she wasn’t—then glanced over at Michael’s body before he could stop himself. When Quinn looked at his baby brother, the last of his anger drained away, replaced by the devastation that was his constant companion these days.

  It was hard to believe that his brother was gone, that Michael was gone. He would never crack another joke, never break another heart, never charge blindly into danger simply because he liked a good fight. He was dead—just like their parents, just like their other brothers. All killed in the fight against the Wyvernmoons. Though Michael was the only one who was a victim of the virus—all the others had died in combat, including his mother, who had been trying to heal Dylan’s brother when the Wyvernmoons got her—his death was no less the result of an attack.

  The Wyvernmoons had finally succeeded in wiping out his entire family. There was no one left. Quinn was suddenly, completely, and absolutely alone in the world.

  Sadness swamped him. He tried to throw it off, tried to get back to the wrath that was the only thing that had kept him going for far too long. Anger was so much easier to deal with than the despair that threatened to swallow him whole.

  “Come on, Quinn.” Dylan’s hand fell on his shoulder, almost as if the other man could see the shift in his feelings. “Come back home with me and Phoebe tonight.”

  “Why?” Quinn reached out a hand, ran it over Michael’s hair. Part of him expected his brother to wake up, to pop off some irreverent yet accurate remark. Twenty-four hours before, they’d been having dinner together, swigging down beer while Quinn teased Michael about his sudden interest in Caitlyn, one of Dylan’s female sentries.

  Now he was dead—because Quinn hadn’t been smart enough or fast enough to save him.

  “Because you look like hell,” Dylan said with his trademark bluntness. Phoebe gasped and tried to elbow her mate, but he pulled her into his arms before she could do any real damage—not that she was trying to.

  “What Dylan means, Quinn, is that we’re worried about you.”

  “Don’t be. I’m fine.” He pulled the sheet over Michael’s head and tried not to remember all the games of peekaboo they’d played when his brother was a toddler. His brother had been nearly thirty years younger than Quinn and the responsibility for taking care of him had often fallen on Quinn’s shoulders.

  Those shoulders slumped abruptly, the weight of everything that had happened in the past year too much for him to handle. But he couldn’t lose it yet, he told himself. Not here, in front of Dylan and Phoebe, who were already looking at him as if he would blow a gasket at any moment—or rip a helpless bystander to pieces with his talons.

  “I appreciate the offer, but I think I’m going to head home. I’m tired and I want to be alone.”

  “That’s a crappy idea and you know it,” Dylan said. “Come back with us. A bunch of the others will be there, and you’ll be safe.”

  “No one’s safe, Dylan. Haven’t you figured that out yet? This fucking disease is everywhere, and until we figure out how the hell to get at it, no one is ever going to be safe.”

  His best friend’s face grew more alarmed, but Quinn just didn’t have it in him anymore to care. He shrugged Dylan off and headed for the door at close to a run. “Thanks for your help, Phoebe. Tell the nurses I’ll make arrangements for Michael’s body tomorrow.”

  “I can—”

  “I’ll do it. He’s my brother.”

  And then he was out of there, his long legs eating up the winding stretch of hallway that led to the front door of the clinic. His clinic. He’d built it from the ground up fifty years before, after spending centuries working to heal the sick and injured members of his clan. Lately, it seemed that the only time he spent there was with someone in the last stages of this damn disease—most of his time was spent at the lab sorting through notes and blood samples and journal articles, searching for a way to end this thing.

  Too bad he didn’t have anything to show for all that time away.

  Slamming through the clinic doors as if the hounds of hell were after him, Quinn turned himself over to the night.

  To the desert.

  To the change that had already begun.

  The streets of the sleepy little New
Mexico town they inhabited were empty, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they weren’t. Nearly everyone in the town was a member of the Dragonstar clan and shifting was as natural as breathing to them.

  As the cool night air brushed against his overheated skin, he stripped out of his clothes, then shoved them into the small pouch he was never without just as his talons burst through the ends of his fingers. He tied it clumsily around his neck, nicking himself with his claws as he did so.

  He secured the knot moments before his human side lost the last vestiges of control.

  His bones cracked, rearranging themselves, and his wings ripped through the muscles of his back. His skin cooled rapidly, slicked over, as fire burned along his nerve endings. It kindled a flame deep inside of him and for long moments, the agony—and ecstasy—of the change ruled him.

  When it was done—when he was dragon—he launched himself straight into the air. And then he flew.

  Cloaked in the invisibility every member of his race was gifted with, Quinn spun and whirled through the air. He climbed high, then shot straight down toward the ground, pulling up only at the last possible second. Did it again and again as he flew through hundreds, thousands of miles of darkness, his speed rivaling a fighter jet’s. His only thoughts were of escape and freedom and fire.

  The headlong rush away—from death, from failure, from himself—went on for hours. Through night, into day and back again. He soared over the beautifully barren deserts of New Mexico and West Texas, cruised over the cement jungles of Dallas and Houston before heading toward the verdant lushness of Louisiana’s bayous. From there, he flew high above the wide, muddy banks of the swollen Mississippi River, following it for hours before circling back toward the Southwestern deserts that echoed with the same loneliness he felt inside himself.