by Tamsin Baker
She really did have a death wish.
His phone pinged with a message, and he hurried his steps.
Chapter 29
Hana was walking as quickly as she could, while still trying to look casual. She longed to be up among the branches of the gum, wishing for the height that automatically calmed her. She needed to think. A bunch of younglings dressed in tiger outfits, fierce faces somewhat muted by long, absurd tails, ran across the lane in front of Hana.
Her neck prickled a second before something slammed into her, driving her into an alcove. That something—someone—pressed her against a boarded-up shopfront, bits of rough wood biting into her back.
She knew that scent—ancient rainforests and unbridled power.
“Katana,” she gasped. “Get off me.”
“Sssh,” the Dragon breathed, and shot a glance over his shoulder at the cobblestones lining the lane.
Hana peered under the arm he had braced over her head. She couldn’t see what it was he was looking at, but suddenly a foul stench shoved its way up her nostrils. She choked and gasped at the horror the scent filled her with, panic sliding like ice picks up and down her spine. She thrashed against him, all her instincts warning her to flee. Flee far away.
“Hana,” he said in a low, urgent hiss, pressing his body more firmly against her. “Stay still.”
She noticed in a dim, faraway part of her mind that wasn’t thrashing and struggling and screaming. that he knew her name.
But that thing…that thing. The unseen thing in the lane. Whatever it was, it doomed them all.
She filled her lungs, ready to give voice to the turmoil inside her. Katana cut a glance to her face, shot his hand out to stifle the scream building inside her. A wail of the dead and dying, because whatever it was out there, that’s what slithered with its scent.
Lost to the chaos inside her, Hana didn’t know if it had been seconds, minutes or hours that Katana murmured to her, using low, soothing words. His body caged hers in the alcove, a shield against the thing that was out there.
Finally, his body eased off hers, and his rough, callused hand left her face. Eventually, the scent of rainforest and man hummed against her skin, and her mind seemed to be her own again.
“What was that smell?” she whispered, pressing her hands against the fabric of her dress to still the shaking. Katana’s silver eyes glowed. He shook his head, a small smile turning up the corner of one lip.
“You could scent that?”
She shrugged, kind of glad she hadn’t imagined the whole thing. To go to pieces because of a smell…She knew the common scent signatures of the demons that frequented downtown. They stunk, yes, in as many hues as a very putrid rainbow, but this—
This was next level demon stink.
“You and I need to have a conversation, Detective.”
Chapter 30
She winced at his words. She’d hoped he might not have bothered with finding out who she really was after she’d taunted him in the alleyway. Should have known better. Her gran always warned her about her temper getting her into trouble.
Seems you were right this time, Gran.
For someone so high up the Dragon chain, it probably took very little effort to track her down. But why did he keep turning up? He still stood very close to her, his legs brushing the outside of her thighs. She started to move her knee, which, thanks to their very big height difference, was free to wedge itself between his legs. She raised her eyebrows at him.
He glared at her.
“How do I know you didn’t sic that thing on me yourself, just so you could conjure up this little meet-cute?”
She raised her knee higher and his silver-turquoise eyes heated with temper.
“I don’t know where you think you’re going, Detective, but the streets aren’t safe for you once Stryker has marked you.”
“Stryker?” she asked, letting her knee drop. “That thing was Stryker’s? If it was cloaked, how come I could smell it?”
“It wasn’t cloaked,” he said, eyes wary. “You shouldn’t have been able to sense it at all. Only someone with…”
He trailed off, his gaze going distant.
“That was Stryker’s spy crew. Cop a bite from one of those, it’ll disable you long enough to send in a retrieval crew.”
“And why, exactly, does he want to retrieve me?”
Logan Katana just watched her. “I would hazard and guess that…he wants a piece of you. And he’s…curious about you. You weren’t exactly up-front about who you were when you swindled your way into the New Moon event.”
She snorted. “And I suppose the most corrupt Clan in the city has the moral high-ground when it comes to deception?”
“You didn’t answer my question, Hana.”
The sound of her name on his tongue licked up her spine like fire, soothing away the fear and horror of the last minutes. She shoved it down. Raised her chin. “You’re the one with dead bodies turning up outside your buildings, mate. You are the one who should be answering my questions. Like, are you going to let me out of this laneway any time soon?”
“Well, that depends.”
His eyes glinted.
Wicked.
The man was wicked.
“There’s something I think you need to see. Don’t worry, it’s…”
Safe.
The word lingered in the air between them, but the crazy thing was, her instincts urged her to stay right by his side, that this was indeed the safest place for her to be in all of downtown. He had protected her, twice now. Once on the night of the party, and now tonight. Probably for his own ends, a voice snapped in her head. Or because of some stupid throwback to his territorial Fae ancestors. That girl’s body had turned up right underneath the very balcony where she’d nearly lost her mind.
But just as she’d tasted the antique dealer’s lie in the shop, right now she tasted clear, undiluted truth on him. Something was happening to her. She’d always been good at reading people. It had been an instinct that had allowed her to go undetected in the precinct for a good stretch. But this…
The Phoenix Fae, her ancestors, had been the keepers of Justice, the truth-tellers. Was she—
“And it concerns the red-haired boy.”
Katana interrupted her thoughts.
Rex.
Within minutes of agreeing to go with the Dragon, a flash car rolled up to the curb by them. She rolled her eyes, but got in, trying not to puncture the leather with her sharply spiked heels.
They arrived at Scales nightclub, descending down a glass lift and seeking out what Hana feared would be the upmarket fight den. The very type of establishment she and Quan had warned the boy to stay away from.
As they rounded the corner of a teal colored bar, two figures rushed towards them. The young Tiger Katana had taken under his wing, Alessio, and the youngling with the cat-eye glasses.
“We couldn’t stop them, boss. We tried—”
“Who?” Hana grit out.
“I think—I think they were Tiger Clan.”
“You think?” Logan snarled.
“They wore white armor with a symbol on their chest.”
“Let me guess,” Hana rasped. “A circle slashed through with two lines.”
Logan turned to her, his eyes narrowing. He didn’t look at the two young boys as he raised a pointed finger at them, then snarled, “I want you both in the penthouse, running the street vision. Full security around the room. Stay there until I tell you otherwise.”
“But, boss.”
“Do it, now.”
The boys ran from the room, leaving Katana staring at Hana.
“And what are we going to—”
Something speared into the room, the sound of shattering glass followed by a thunk of metal embedding in flesh.
Katana’s hand went to his side and Hana’s eyes were slow to piece together what had happened, until blood bloomed between his fingers.
Chapter 31
Katana’s fingers pr
essed into the flesh around the arrow embedded in his side. His eyes shuttered over dilating pupils. Not an ordinary arrow, one laced with something that threatened to knock the Dragon clean off his feet.
Hana swore.
Nightclub patrons ran for their lives. Katana’s waiters hovered nearby, shock etched in their faces.
“Mr. Katana?”
Glass exploded into the dining room. The windows, all of them shattering simultaneously and—
That stench was back. The rotting, sweet decay that promised death. Hana clutched a shaking hand to her mouth, rushing to Katana, wedging herself under the arm he braced on the table.
“Come on,” she gasped. “We need to get out of here, now.”
Logan’s men turned to fend off what Hana could see was a brood of Tentacular demons, picking up glasses and throwing them at the groping bloodsuckers, upending tables to break into makeshift spears.
Something slimy caught at Hana’s bare ankle and she shouted, stomping down on it with her heel. Katana’s eyes were glazed, and he didn’t respond to Hana’s distress. Gone. He was far gone.
“We need to get below ground!” she shouted above the din. The tunnels. She needed to get them to the tunnels.
The pressure on Hana’s side steered her toward what she guessed was the kitchen. It was the only response the Dragon was able to give. The Tentacular demons had subdued the waiters, and now a hundred beady eyes glared at Hana and the big, incapacitated Dragon.
Heat flared against Hana’s collarbones, her shoulder blades. The rage she felt that day in the cemetery, being stuck up in a tree, not being able to get close to her grandma, filled her.
Instead of stifling the call of the phoenix as she’d always done, as had become second nature, this time, she savored the burn across her shoulders, the imprint of wings as clear as if they had sprouted from her shoulders.
This time, she let it flood through her—the rage, the pent-up power—until the flutter of wings locked in the cage deep within her began to unfurl like petals of a deadly flower. She called on her ancestors to protect her now, channeled the rage of centuries.
She and Katana were surrounded by Tentacular demons and that stench became stronger. Hana could hear the screaming in her head, the madness that dragged her under not an hour ago starting to clamor against the fire of the phoenix.
Moments. They had moments before they would be paralyzed again by that despair.
“Goddammit, Katana!” she shouted. “Move your goddamn legs!”
There was a slight glint of anger in his eyes, beyond the shadow that lay claim to him. It was enough to get him staggering towards the kitchen and what she hoped would be an entrance to the underground tunnels.
She focused on the flash of heat across her back, the song of the phoenix singing in her blood and flung it out of her with all the might she could manage. Flames and heat flared behind her, like wings forming a giant, glittering wall of scarlet and gold. Katana’s eyes widened. The Tentacular demons shrieked and pulled up short, hissing, before the wall. The flames seemed to give that entity—the stench—pause too.
Hana pushed with all her might against the mountain that was Logan Katana, and they stumbled through the kitchen doors. She leaned him against a bench, frantically scanning the kitchen floor. There, a trap door. She flung it open, her mind’s eye still holding that wall of flame against the beasts that hounded them. She could feel the darkness testing her shield, probing for weak spots, pounding against it. Reaching fingers of jagged glass into weak spots that made Hana grit her teeth, pant and hiss against the agony.
A few more seconds.
Her phoenix senses screamed for height, for flight, not the darkness that she propelled Katana down into, slamming the door shut on top of them. The tunnels were their only chance to lose the demons and the darkness, but they had to move fast.
All she could hear was the pant of her breaths and the distant shriek of the Tentacular demons. She could feel the darkness though, smashing through the Phoenix shield, turning it to ashes, and she knew it wouldn’t be enough. They couldn’t go fast enough to outrun that stinking darkness, not even if Katana was at full capacity.
Not unless the Dragon spouted actual wings and busted their way out of here.
Katana stopped dead, as if he heard her thoughts, turquoise flaring in the depths of his silver eyes. He lifted his hand and slid it under the leather of her jacket, placing it on the bare skin over her heart, the place where she could feel invisible fire flaring. Eyes pleading, as if begging her to—understand?
Hana’s head fell back as she lost herself to the fire, the touch he branded her with. She screamed and heat flared from his hand, along collarbones and shoulder blades, and then she was running so fast her feet barely touched the ground, hoisting the Dragon on her shoulder again, but this time he was not a dead weight. A phantom wind was at their backs, propelling them weightlessly, swiftly, soundlessly through the tunnels. Lightning fast.
The sparse light of the sconces flashed by, and the phoenix rattled its cage inside her, stirring deep down in her soul. Their flight through the tunnels was terrifying, breathless.
Wonderful.
She felt the wrath of the dark thing behind them. Distant now. But they must get somewhere it couldn’t follow them. Now.
“Where?” she shouted at the Dragon, who was still branding her chest with fire. But his head lolled against his chest, whatever magics he had pushed into her seeming to have taken the last of his consciousness with it. The Dragon was in bad shape and it was pretty plain that now they both had marks over their heads. She wouldn’t take the risk of leading Stryker and the Tigers back to her loft and Mama Singh’s shop. So, she set her thoughts toward the safest place she could think of and they stream towards it.
Chapter 32
The Dragon sweated and hallucinated, muttering a name over and over:
“Seb. Seb. Please, Seb.”
She didn’t know who Seb was, but the two young Dragons that Katana had ordered to stay in his penthouse knew that he was safe. Hana had made sure of that. That little escapade had earned her no little rebuke from Quan, who currently stood in the doorway of the secret bunker another level down from his fighting den, where they’d been hiding out these past days as the Dragon refused to come out of his stupor.
They should have moved the safe house days ago, when Quan suggested it. They would need to do it soon, a risky proposition now that they had the number one target for the Tigers in their midst.
“No change?” Quan asked, his eyes bright and curious.
Quan’s healer, a Turtle Clan woman he trusted with his life, had been to see Katana both morning and night in the several days since Hana had emerged with the big Dragon draped over her shoulder into the safe house, to Quan’s wide-eyed surprise.
He’d had only a second to stare at the gold and scarlet peeking from beneath the collar of her jacket before he’d rushed into action, calling his healer, helping Hana tend to the Dragon as best they could while they waited.
The healer had taken care of the poisonous dart and bandaged up the Dragon’s side. But still…
“The healer says it is a magical ailment, only cured by magics beyond her power.”
“Your forked-tongued friend has been sniffing around.”
Silver.
“Trying to find out what I’m hiding down here?”
“Well, you did pay him a fortune to fortify the shields on this place.” Hana winced. “Which I appreciate. But I wonder…what do you hope to gain by keeping him here, Hana?”
Hana couldn’t really explain why she hadn’t dumped his ass, handed him over to the Tigers so they could get on with the job. He was a Dragon, an ancient ally who had long ago turned from her people, betrayed them. And yet…The way her magic had combined with his…the fact that she had been able to do those things to get them out of the clutches of that dark entity.
Hana’s head spun with the formidable, life-changing questions, but she didn’t
have questions about the Dragon.
She knew, with whatever sense was emerging as she accepted and embraced her Phoenix heritage, whatever powers, that she and the Dragon were inextricably linked. She wouldn’t hand him over. She would protect him as he had protected—would protect—her.
If that made her a territorial Fae throwback—so be it.
That didn’t mean she wanted to put Quan and his club in danger, though. He’d done too much for her already.
“I’ll find somewhere to move him, Quan. I promise…I just…”
Quan sighed. “Always with the kicked puppies, you and me. Just watch that the puppy doesn’t wake up and bite you.” He smirked. “I’m out. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Hana gave him a rude gesture and turned back to Katana as Quan left.
He was laid out on the day bed, orange and yellow material fluttering around him in a draft that must be creeping up from the tunnels below. Quan had stripped off the Dragon’s shirt and pants so the healer could inspect him, and she could see the outline of taut muscles as he now lay under a thin blanket. His impressive biceps glittered with teal swirls and whorls, pictures of ancient temples, forests, lakes, symbols and dragons. Lots of dragons.
Hana’s upper body was now covered in similar marks, but hers were glittering gold and scarlet, the marks of the Phoenix.
She could still feel them burning there, pulled her jacket collar closer around her neck to hide the markings that curled up her collarbones and wended around her neck.
Whoever had sent those demons and the dark power, Stryker on his own or with the Tiger’s support, forced her to announce her heritage, her rebellion, in a massive way. But she hadn’t burst into flames or gone insane. Yet.
So that was a plus, right?
She yearned to shed the jacket, craved to see the Phoenix symbols on her body. She crossed to the mirror on the den’s armoire, but something caught her eye in the reflection.
Katana. But his features…
