by Paula Quinn
Garion caught Jacob staring at him through the rearview mirror and shrugged his shoulders. This was a new side of Helena he hadn’t seen before.
“Killing someone isn’t as easy as you think it is,” he told her.
“I don’t think it’s easy. I think it’s necessary. And you forget, I was trained in ways to kill since I was seven and we went to live with Hendrick.”
“We were trained to kill Drakkon, not people,” her brother said.
“Evil is evil.”
“Fiji or Tahiti?”
She lifted her gaze to Garion. Her heart fluttered in her chest. “What?”
“I’ll go with you. We’ll get on a plane tonight. The three of us. Jacob, do you want to mingle with some natives?”
“Hell, yes.”
“Let’s forget the Elders and disappear together, Helena.”
“But what if they find you?”
He turned to flash his dimples at her. “They won’t. They don’t have you.”
“That’s true,” her brother said from the back. “If it wasn’t for Helena, they wouldn’t even know about Marcus Aq—”
The idiot shut his mouth when Helena glared at him over her seat. But it was too late.
Garion blew out an exhalation. “Let’s keep that from my father.”
Yes. She glared at Jacob again but he was too busy taking in the sight of the villa up ahead. He barely said another word while he swept inside it, commenting on the beauty of the view from every window, at every angle. He paused at some of the art and found his way into the study where Garion’s truest treasures were. Garion, of course, followed him, with Carina tucked into the crook of his arm.
“You’re loaded,” he muttered to Garion, examining a Van Gogh. He came to a horizontal glass cabinet Helena hadn’t noticed before. Inside was an arrow with what looked like a golden tip.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“An arrow my father pulled from himself.”
Helena knew it was her father’s arrow. How was she going to tell Jacob who killed their father?
“Why don’t we have some hot chocolate?” Garion offered and led her brother out. “Or coffee. We have dessert from—” He looked at her over her brother’s shoulder. “Do we have any dessert left?”
She reached out to pinch him but missed. “I haven’t touched it. But you’ll understand why he would think I ate it all when you taste it, Jake.”
They left him in the main room looking out the windows and met in the kitchen.
#
Garion immediately took hold of her and pulled her in. “Don’t worry, I’ll still love you when you’re twice your size.” He cupped her ass in both hands and squeezed while he bent to kiss her.
“Keep me exerted and it won’t matter what I eat.”
He smiled and nibbled on her lip. “That, I promise to do.”
He heard Carina hiss and speed past the kitchen. Something was wrong.
“Jacob?” he called out.
“Garion!” he shouted. “You better get in here!”
Garion sped from the kitchen in time to see the Red one-armed Drakkon flying into the eastern wall, shattering glass everywhere. Long, black claws closed around Jacob and blood spurted out of five different puncture wounds. Helena screamed.
Garion wasn’t going to give Red any time to do anymore damage. Running, he changed and flapped his wings. His back feet lifted off the floor and, with the power of his wings behind him, he rammed them into Red and clamped his teeth around Red’s scaled neck. Both Drakkon plunged out the window. They were falling. Wings tangled. Teeth snapping.
Garion! Jacob!
Knowing he had to finish this quickly, he looked into his old friends eyes. I’m sorry, Red. You left me no choice.
He pulled back his arrow-tipped tail and then buried it in Red’s softer underbelly.
The wounded Drakkon wailed and rolled its head in agony, and then flew off. Garion didn’t give chase. He’d punctured Red with the pure gold elements in his tall. Let him go off someplace alone to die.
He raced back to the villa and was horrified to find Helena on her knees, leaning over her brother.
Hurrying to them, Garion felt Jacob’s throat for a pulse. It was faint, but he was alive.
“I can help him, but—”
“Do it.”
He looked at her. “He’ll be Drakkon, Helena.”
“Good, then he’ll be alive and happy. Do it, please, Garion.”
“Get me a knife.”
She leaped to her feet and returned an instant later with a knife. He held the edge to his hand and slid it across his flesh. Blood poured free and dripped down his palm. He placed it over one of Jacob’s open wounds.
What was he doing creating another one? He felt his essence and healing power seeping from him and into Jacob. He looked at Helena heedlessly swiping at her tears. His path had already been set. He couldn’t turn back now.
Chapter Twenty
“We can’t stay here,” Garion said, dressed and staring at the broken window in his living room. The sun had gone down hours ago. The villa was freezing. Jacob and Carina might not make it through the night.
“He’s doing well,” Helena said at his side. She turned to look up at him, offering him solace in the twilight blue of her eyes.
She rattled his logic until every concern felt like foolishness to his heart. He smiled, breathless by her grace and mad with desire for more of her. His blood singed his veins every time he saw her, thought of her. He wanted an eternity with her. She made him happy in every possible way. From the first time they met, being with her felt comfortable and easy—like he finally fit somewhere.
He’d crisp anyone who got in the way of their destiny.
“He needs a few more hours,” he told her, holding her close. “His wounds were serious. He needs a little more time before he can travel.”
“No,” came a voice from the wide archway. “I don’t.”
They separated immediately and both turned to look at Jacob. He was standing unaided, dressed in clothes from Garion’s closet, and Carina perched on his shoulder—at which Garion couldn’t help but scowl.
“You should be in bed recovering,” he told Jacob.
“No,” her brother argued. “I should be in Fiji or Tahiti recovering.”
Well, will we tell him that he’s Drakkon?
Garion felt his shoulders grow tense. He didn’t think Jacob would hate him for the chance to fly. His stomach tightened in a knot because now there were three. Not yet.
“So where’s it going to be folks?” Jacob asked, holding up his hands. “And on the way to the airport, you two can tell me what’s going on between you…and why, when I came awake, did I have the urge to eat Carina?”
Garion ground his teeth and reached him in two strides to snatch his cat away.
“Fiji,” Helena interjected when it looked as if her brother were about to protest Carina’s departure.
He was about to, Garion discovered, probing Jacob’s thoughts. Possessiveness was one of Drakkon’s strongest instincts. Garion knew it as fact. He didn’t care who Jacob was or what instincts were being awakened.
“She is mine,” he said on a muffled growl. They both are, he added turning back to smile at Helena. “Fiji it is then.”
“You slept with him?” Jacob blurted at her.
“What?” Helena asked in a high-pitched, guilty voice. Her eyes darted to Garion, who quickly looked away. She picked up one of the pillows on his sofa and flung it at him. “Really, Garion?”
“Kind of hypocritical, don’t you both think?” Jacob asked, tempting Garion to send him back to bed from a fist to the guts.
“It’s different,” Garion said. He’d let his own Drakkon instincts take over for a moment, turning what he and Helena were into something less honorable and now he would rectify it.
“How is it different?” her brother asked him.
“I love her, Jacob,” Garion told him, softening his smile
on her. “She’s my life mate.”
“Oh,” her brother muttered, growing serious. “Congratulations?”
Right. Garion thought. Obstacles. Logic.
They are nothing compared to you, Gold.
He looked at her, knowing his heart was in his eyes and not caring who saw it.
“Hey,” Jacob said, moving toward them…and then past them toward the window. “Do you hear that?”
“What?” Helena asked.
Listening, Garion heard it—the whirl of helicopter blades in the distance. More than one. Were they coming closer?
They were!
Jarakan of the Ninth. He sent out a probe and turned to Helena at the same time. “Get your things and get Carina.”
Garion of the Twenty-first. The voice sounded only slightly older than Garion’s and far haughtier.
How did you find me?
Easy. Once we found Helena White’s phone and the photo of you entering the apartment building where that same night some kind of beast, that had apparently lived there, escaped from the skylight. After that, finding your name was easy as was finding your one-armed friend. We had one of our own inject him with a tiny tracking device while he was in the hospital. It took a little time to get here, but here we finally are, meeting at last.
Garion held his finger to his lips and let Helena and Jacob listen in while they prepared to leave.
We haven’t met yet and, if you value your life, we won’t. Turn around and go back. Leave me alone and I’ll never return. Jeremy Redmond is dead. Step foot on the ground and suffer the same fate. The choice is yours.
Jarakan laughed in his head. Your house will be surrounded in less than a minute. Surrender yourself or be shot and taken.
Garion ended the connection with Helena and her brother and sent his next thought to Jarakan alone. Come on, then.
There was only one way to end this. Garion sensed four Elders and at least thirty men, probably Bane. Jacob might be walking but he wasn’t ready to fight. Even with Helena at his side, Garion didn’t believe they’d get out alive.
There was only one way.
“Helena,” he said taking her by the arms as she moved toward the garage and the truck inside. “It’s too late. They’re already upon us. We won’t get far in the truck.”
She set down her bag at the door. “Okay, then let’s fight.”
He wanted to smile, to lift her off her feet and off the earth and take her to the stars. “Do you love me, Helena?”
“Yes, why are you asking me?”
“I need you to swear on that love that you won’t follow me.”
Garion! What are you going to do?
Promise me, love. I’ll get us out of this but I can’t do it if I’m worried about you flying—or getting shot. Please, do as I ask.
I can’t.
You must.
He waited for her answer while the helicopters hovered over the house.
“Okay! I promise!” She shouted at him and then immediately began to cry when he leaped out the broken window.
#
He flew upward, high above the helicopters, until Helena could no longer see him. Two pilots tried to turn in the air and almost crashed into each other. He returned an instant later, diving from the stars. Drawing back his long neck, he opened his mouth and fire issued forth, lighting up the heavens, the Drakkon, and the men burning in two helicopters.
Helena felt her stomach tighten at the same memory that haunted her for fourteen years, coming back to life.
Two more helicopters approached from the west, another from the south. He swooped low and swiped his enormous tail, knocking one aircraft into the mountain wall. Four more appeared from the east.
Helena’s heart hammered. Could he fight them all off? How much fire did he have?
“He’s even more astounding than I remember,” Jacob whispered somewhere to her left. “How can I see him in the dark, Helena?”
She took her eyes off Garion for an instant and looked at her brother. “Because to save you he had to turn you. I told him to do it. I begged him.”
“I’m…Drakkon?”
She nodded, hoping he wasn’t about to flip out.
“Then what the hell am I doing standing around? He needs help.” He waited a moment then tugged her sleeve. “How do I do it? How do I change?”
“He doesn’t want us to turn, Jacob. Being Drakkon is precarious. You can change back at any time and plummet to the earth.”
He was silent while she watched the battle going on outside, her face lit by the exploding helicopters.
Did you fly, Helena? he asked in her head, above the noise, proving he understood, at least, that part of his new power.
Yes.
How was it?
Thrilling.
Garion used his tail to take down two more choppers. When he followed up with a blast from his inferno, lighting up the sky, something caught Helena’s eye to the left.
A glint of light. Fire flashing off metal. Gold!
Her frantic gaze found a man leaning out of the side of one of the choppers. In his arm, a bow, and nocked in it, a gold-tipped arrow.
Garion hadn’t seen him.
No!
The arrow flew and found its mark through Garion’s scales. His giant body swayed and his wings flapped vigorously while Helena screamed and ran to the window. Garion. No. She felt the change. She closed her eyes and let it come then. Refusing to be afraid, she spread her wings and flew out the window.
They killed him. They killed him. Fury boiled her blood, hot, scalding fire. She sped on the wind, hunting for the helicopter with the man who’d shot Garion. They would all die, but he’d be first. When she found him, she opened her mouth and sent a steady stream of flames through the sky. She watched the propellers burn and the chopper go down. Then she continued on to the next.
You let him turn you, Helena.
She heard Jarakan’s voice and looked around at the dark sky. You killed him. I’m coming for you. You’ll never get his blood.
She listened, trying to sense where he was. Her heart ached to go to Garion, to hold him again.
Something flew by her. She looked down the side of the fell and found the Elders and six hunters. They were shooting at her. She felt a prick and looked down her blood-stained scales. A gold bullet.
So, she would die with her life mate then.
She began to fall, but she wasn’t afraid. She’d been loved by a man with a Drakkon heart. As she fell, her eye caught the light from another blast of fire burning the Elders and the others to cinders.
She tried to focus on Jacob’s wide, beautiful, white wings coming toward her.
#
Helena opened her eyes and looked around. She was in Garion’s bed. His bed. Her heart faltered thinking of him. She could smell him on the sheets. He was gone, shot with a—Wait. Wasn’t she shot, too? Why was she still alive? She sat up. It was still night. If she was hit with gold and was still alive…
Garion?
When no answer came, she covered her face in her hands and wept. How? How could he be gone? Where was his body? The Elders didn’t get it, did they?
Someone’s fingers touched her hand. She shot back, startled and then caught her breath.
Garion bent to her, looking very much alive and quite happy to see her. How? She didn’t care! She flung her arms around his neck and wept some more when he closed his arms around her and pulled her into his strong, familiar embrace.
“I thought you were dead. I saw you get shot with a golden arrow!”
“I know. Apparently gold doesn’t kill gold Drakkons. You were shot, too. How do you feel?”
How did she feel? Her life mate just sat on the bed, alive and more beautiful than ever before. She was elated! Thankful!
“You healed me again?”
“I didn’t have to. You did it yourself.”
Hmmm, maybe being a Drakkon wasn’t so bad, after all, she thought as he kissed her. She had him to fly with, to li
ve out the next several centuries with. She couldn’t wait to begin.
In Fiji.
