Lucas spoke carefully. “She might have ended up in that sort of situation anyway.”
“Perhaps. But I wouldn’t have contributed to it. If I had been courageous and brave, I wouldn’t have let someone take the blame for my mistakes. I can’t change the past. But I can try to make amends.”
Lucas squeezed my hand once more, glancing at me with eyes full of meaning. “I think that’s something we’re all trying to do.”
He took his hand away. “Take a nap, Lana. We’ve still got a few hours left, and you look exhausted. I’ll be here when you wake.”
I knew I wasn’t going to sleep, but I was tired of talking. I lowered the seat back and turned away from him, staring at the tree-lined darkness, twisting the cheap silver ring on my finger.
When I awoke, I could see the row of tall casinos and outrageous neon against the line of marsh and gray sky. It was an otherwise ordinary-looking town, kind of like a bland guy who’d decided to go for selective cosmetic surgery.
I yawned and saw the neon lit “Do Atlantic City” sign go by.
The morning sky grew brighter, but there was no Photogram ready shot to be shared on social media. Only the clouds and smell of seaside air mixed with hints of rotting vegetation and organic decay from the miles of marsh that separated the city from the mainland.
Lucas was next to me, now wearing dark gray sweats that had no right to look as good on him as they did.
“Where did you get the clothes?”
There was just the tiniest upturned corner to his mouth, like he was suppressing a laugh. “In the trunk of the car.”
“So you were just driving naked this whole time?”
The corner turned in to a full-blown smirk. “You didn’t seem to mind.”
I opened my mouth, about to tell him exactly what I thought, when the sound of a phone rang through the car. On the dashboard, the name “Dick 2” popped up.
“Randall. We’re almost there,” answered Lucas.
A guttural, angry-sounding voice filled the car, both melodic and hissing at the same time. I hadn’t heard that since I was young, on the occasions when I had been roaming the acres of the Randall estate.
The sound was, as I now knew, Draconic.
Lucas’s response definitely was not one the recipient wanted to hear. He responded with more guttural yelling.
“Understood. Randall out.” Lucas pulled over.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
He turned off the car. “It’s fine. They want us to pick up subs.”
Sandwiches?
My stomach growled at the thought of food. “Wait—”
But Lucas had already gotten out of the car.
The car felt so much cooler without him. He had always been this wellspring of heat, a byproduct of what he was.
I realized there was a plastic bag at my feet. I opened it. A new set of sweats, size M.
I didn’t hesitate, stripping off the too-tight, too-exposed dress, and throwing on the sweats.
Lucas opened the car door with several bags that smelled strongly of onions and deli meats. “I hope I have the right size for you.”
“When did you get the clothes?”
He put most of the bags in the back seat. “When you were asleep.” He got into the front and handed me the remaining bag. “Here.”
“That whole angry-sounding conversation was about sandwiches?”
“Down here, they’re called subs. And, to answer your question, yes.”
“That’s enough to feed an army.”
“He asked me to pick up an order for the Princess’s breakfast.”
“And he would kill you if you didn’t comply?”
Lucas gave me an odd look. “No. He just said don’t forget to make sure they added extra onions as per the Princess’s request.”
He laughed at the expression on my face.
“Draconic always sounds like that. A conversation about the proper care and planting of roses sounds like they’re planning a war. It’s when they get quiet you have to be…careful.”
This was getting more and more surreal.
We drove through the decidedly unglamorous downtown with stores that seemed lively despite their faded signs: a Vietnamese nail shop, an Arabic meat market, and a Spanish bodega, just blocks away from a golden, gleaming neon casino.
“I find it hard to believe a princess wants to hang out here.”
"She’s meeting someone. Casinos are neutral ground—well, to dragons, anyway. The illusion of risk and reward is supposed to have good omens for meetings between enemies."
Enemies? “Who would be foolish enough to be enemies with dragons? Well, other than the Devourer.”
Lucas laughed. “The shen.”
Shen. That’s what Sophie called herself. “What exactly are shen anyway? Daniel said they were what humans called fairies, but some of her family was definitely not fairy.”
“Fae is what the English called them. Every culture has their own word for them: djinn, rakashas, thunderbirds, rusalkas, whatever. Pretty much any magical semi-human creature in any human mythology has a shen at the center of the story.”
I seized on the one word in the list that I actually knew. “So wait, you’re saying that fairies are related to Native American thunderbirds?”
Lucas turned into a red-painted driveaway where a valet in a dark suit awaited. “In the same way Geronimo was related to the Queen of England.”
We left the car at the valet, with instructions for them to deliver the sandwiches to the Princess’s suite, and walked into the casino. I carried the tablet with me in a non-descript black bag slung across my chest. The pathway was one of glossy, sand-stone colored marble interspersed with thick, multicolored carpets. Slot machines and video poker flashed neon lights, while jingling in a cacophony that made me feel a flash of sympathy for those who worked here.
We made our way through the crowd barely dodging a woman on a scooter who was wearing a pink Florida T-shirt.
And it was there at a craps table that I saw the Princess. She was shorter than I had expected. She looked like any other white human woman, maybe dressed a bit better in her cream-colored suit. She was also flanked by a light-brown-skinned woman with an artfully ripped T-shirt exposing biceps that could bench-press a car and an Asian man in a suit who somehow managed to be menacing with his short aqua-blue hair.
I had met magical beings before, I told myself. Sophie was a shen, and she was really nice, right? How bad could this be?
But as the crowd shifted, my skin went cold, and I could feel the scales rippling forth underneath my sweats involuntarily.
Because standing with the princess was the last woman I had ever wanted to see.
The woman who had ended my childhood, had sent me from my home, and who even now gave me nightmares that rivaled those of the Devourer.
Lucas’s mother.
6
Kelorisana Randall was tall with the kind of perfect, feminine face you tended to find stamped on little girls’ dolls. She stood straight, her posture confident and strong as only a beautiful, wealthy blonde could be.
I wanted to be just like her when I was young. My mother and I had lived in a cottage on her estate. At one time, I even thought she was fond of me. After all, the extravagant birthday and holiday presents for every gift-giving Judeo-Christian-Islamic holiday said something, didn’t they? It wasn’t until I was in school that I realized Eid al-Fitr, Hanukkah, and Christmas were considered holidays of different religions. I once asked Lucas about it, and he had only shrugged. “My mother can’t tell these human holidays apart. She believes loyalty is bought by gifts.”
Though I wasn’t technically her employee, my mother was. And Ms. Kelora, as my mother called her, had certainly bought my mother’s loyalty. To her dying day, my mother would never allow a single negative word in her presence about the woman who had found her pregnant and dying of thirst in the desert and brought her to America.
Kelora had bought my
mother’s loyalty before I had been born.
Lucas looped his thick fingers around mine. Instantly, her gorgeous blue eyes narrowed at me.
She leaned over and whispered to the Princess, who glanced at me and nodded.
I had to get out of here.
Lucas’s hand tightened on mine.
Bicep-lady was suddenly in front of me, speaking with an accent I couldn’t quite place but which sounded Caribbean. “The Princess asks that you await her in her suite while she collects her winnings. You are to come with me.”
“I—”
Lucas didn’t let me go. “I don’t want to see my mother any more than you do.”
Ha. Now that was a contest I was positive I would win instantly. “Why do you say that?”
“I haven’t seen her in almost fifteen years. I’ve been shot, stabbed, beaten, comatose, and nearly died several times. Not once have I heard from her.”
Something inside me tensed. That didn’t seem right. That didn’t go with what I knew about his mother.
And then, Lucas’s words sunk in. Somehow, when Daniel had explained to me what he and his little band of dragons were doing for the last few years in hunting down the Devourer, I hadn’t realized the enormity of what he had actually been saying.
Lucas had almost died. And I would have never seen him again.
The near loss felt like a dark abyss opening inside me.
Lucas stopped, looked at me, and wiped one tear away. “I’m here. I survived. That’s what’s important.”
The woman’s voice cut between us like a sword. “Are you two coming or not?”
I turned away from him, resuming the path through the slot-machine maze, trying to repress the sudden wellspring of emotion that seemed to come out of nowhere.
No time to think about what it meant, if anything. Any friend would mourn the death of another. What was more important to think about was that Kelora’s absence from Lucas’s life didn’t make any sense. If there was anything I thought I was sure about, it was that Kelora loved her son.
Or at least she wanted to keep him alive.
“You haven’t spoken to your mother in fifteen years?”
His grip on my hand was getting tighter and tighter. “Yes.”
Scales felt like goosebumps, sliding along my skin, ready for danger. Fifteen years ago, Kelora had confronted me about my teenage infatuation with Lucas.
Fifteen years ago, she extracted a promise from me to keep away from her son in a bargain I couldn’t turn down.
I love my son, more than anything in this world, and the last. He’s all I have. And he will die if he is with you.
I shook the memory away.
What had happened?
We took a private elevator to the suite, which, after a keycard swipe and a code entered, opened directly into a white marbled foyer, flecked with gold and black swirls. The scent of onions permeated the room, and the woman sighed in happiness. “Thanks for bringing the subs,” she said, rushing in.
I fought a shudder as I stepped out onto the marble. The last time I saw marble like this, I was in the Devourer’s prison.
We followed the woman deeper into the suite, past potted palms and a room of gold that screamed of money to spare. The kind of high-roller suite you would expect to find in a New Jersey casino. The woman ripped into the greasy paper bag and tore into the sandwich like a predator.
If my guess was correct and she was a dragon, she was a predator.
I hadn’t eaten in a while. I knew I should feel hungry, but my impending meeting with the Princess, with Kelora, left my stomach ill-prepared for food.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the ocean which faded into a gray sky. I turned back toward the woman when I heard the clink of glass on glass. She had set two wine glasses filled with a bubbly dark soda on the counter.
Lucas picked them up and brought them over. His face was troubled, seeming to dread the impending conversation with his mother.
I knew better than to ask, especially with someone else in the room who was listening to our every word. I took the glass from him, my fingers brushing his, and looked at him. Are you okay? “Soda in a wine glass?”
He ignored my inquisitive look. “Apparently it tastes like vir, a drink from where we came from that was used like wine is here. To be given soda means that the Princess plans on treating you like a dragon.”
“Is that a good or bad thing?”
“I don’t know.”
We stood there holding the glasses, neither of us drinking, listening to the woman smack her lips.
I pulled out the tablet out of the bag and checked the progress of my bots. There were several beeps as the bots reported the places that Val was likely to have been taken to.
Philadelphia. Atlantic City. Baltimore.
I sighed, putting the tablet back in my bag. Just a small portion of the mid-Atlantic seaboard, that was all.
Judging by the noises of eating satiation and satisfaction, the woman was definitely a dragon. Something else I’d learned the hard way was that humans typically didn’t appreciate the sounds of consumption. Dragons, on the other hand, felt silent eating equivalent to a lack of appreciation for food, which was an insult to…whatever they believed in.
The doors swung open and the Princess strode in, her massive bodyguard following her.
She inhaled the scent of sandwiches with joy and headed right to the counter, ripping open the brown paper bags in fluid motion that reminded me of what she was.
“Sit. Eat. And then we will talk.” She turned to Lucas. “Your mother will be along in a few moments.”
I watched as the dragons each polished off a two-foot-long sandwich and made noises like—well, like dragons. I picked up the fist-sized sandwich Lucas had ripped off for me and took a hesitant bite. The perfect combination of salty Italian deli meat and cheese cushioned by a delicious white bread exploded in my mouth. Hunger roared forth, and before I knew it, I was eating with as much noise as the dragons.
When I finished, I saw the Princess looking at me with what possibly could be approval, but I knew I had to be imagining it.
She dabbed at her mouth with more elegance than a paper napkin deserved. “So, I’ve been told there’s something you need to show me.”
I should have felt more trepidation at her request, perhaps. But the specter of Kelora’s impending arrival made me more nervous. How bad could this be?
I rolled up my sleeve and let the black scales emerge and cover my skin.
The Princess’s eyes widened. “Fascinating. Do they cover your entire body?”
“If I wish it.”
“Show me.”
I hesitated.
Her eyes seemed to twinkle at me. “You don’t think we’ve all seen naked bodies before?”
The scales would basically cover everything like a suit of armor. I let them cover my entire body, save for my hair and face, and stripped my sweats off.
“It is sym-armor,” said the Princess with wide golden eyes. “Lucas says the Devourer put it on you?”
“I don’t remember,” I said honestly. “One moment I was on a plane, and then…”
Then I remembered waking up, blocking a sword with my bare, scale-covered hands as Lucas had tried to take off my head while wearing a mind-control crown.
“She is free of the Devourer’s taint,” said Lucas. “I’ve used the anti-Devourer charms, the ones made recently by Sophie and Hunter, and they’ve had no effect on her.”
Charms? What charms?
“What does it mean when a human has been chosen by sym-armor, when it is forced upon by an enemy?” said the man I had taken to be the Princess’s bodyguard.
“Give me your hand,” said the Princess.
I took a step forward and placed my hand in hers.
A spark shot from her, skittering around my scales like living electricity. Even through the scales, I felt as if she were scraping me with burning sandpaper and let out a cry of pain.
Sh
e dropped my hand. “Sorry about that. I had to test it out for myself.”
I held the hand I had touched her with. My teeth felt as if they were ringing. “Test?”
“It is as Lucas claims. But there is severe molecular degradation in that armor, as is to be expected.”
“I’m not taking it off,” I said.
“No,” agreed the Princess. “Because if we do, you will almost certainly die.”
Lucas bolted from his seat. “What?”
“Sym-armor is bonded on a permanent basis.”
The Princess’s face took on a disturbing expression. It would have been less troubling if it was disgust, anger, fear, annoyance, or some combination of all of them.
It was worse, and it raised alarm bells in my head.
It was compassion.
The Princess spoke her words carefully. “The powers it enhances may be great. But there is a trade-off. There is always a trade-off for such powerful gifts."
Abruptly, the sound came back.
I heard the voice I had secretly been dreading for almost eighteen years.
“Usually. Not always,” said Kelora.
She stepped forward toward Lucas, as if expecting him to give her a hug.
He didn’t move.
“Hello, Lucas.”
“Mother.”
In all these years, she hadn’t aged at all. But that was common for dragons. My mother had called Kelora an angel whom God had blessed, not that Kelora believed in the same god at all.
“I wanted to stay in touch,” she said softly.
He shrugged those massive shoulders and said nothing. For a moment, I almost saw the little boy who missed his mother. When we were young, my mother had been responsible for him during Kelora’s frequent business trips.
Kelora gazed at me, her expression unreadable.
My muscles felt tight and coiled, ready for fight or flight, perhaps both.
Belonging to the Dragon: Lick of Fire (Dragon Lovers Book 2) Page 5
