Dark Embers

by Tessa Adams

  He ignored her; just kept pumping.

  She placed a hand over his, tried to still his movements. “He isn’t coming back.”

  He still didn’t acknowledge her, and she’d had enough. Glancing at her watch, she said, “I’m calling it. Time of death, ten twenty-one.”

  “Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare!” He leaped at her, would have connected if Dylan hadn’t flashed himself between them in the span of one heartbeat to the next.

  “I’m sorry, Quinn. I wish it was different. I do, but he’s gone. You have to let him go.”

  “Don’t tell me what I have to do.” He dropped down on the sidewalk, tried to resume CPR. But her resistance had broken his will. Instead of pressing on Liam’s chest, he laid his head down on it and started to sob.

  Phoebe’s heart broke as Quinn lost it. Through everything, he’d been the stoic one. He hadn’t shown sadness or anger or even defeat, just an absolute determination to cure the disease ravaging his people. But this—this inexplicable act of violence—had shattered even that.

  She turned to Dylan, hoping for some help, but he was already squatting next to Quinn, pulling the healer to his feet. Quinn was out of it, his shock plain as he surveyed their bloody, ragtag group.

  Dylan looked from her to Quinn, indecision written on his face. “Take care of him,” she said. “Get him to the cave ASAP and try to get something hot in him. I’ll be there as soon as we take care of Liam.”

  He didn’t seem happy with her solution, but in the end, it was the only one that made sense. Quinn was in bad shape, too bad to get to Dylan’s lair on his own. He was one of Dylan’s sentries, one of his closest friends, and therefore Dylan’s responsibility. It didn’t bother her that he felt like he needed to look out for him. It would have bothered her if he hadn’t.

  “Go, Dylan. I mean it. Get him home.”

  He ground his teeth, but eventually nodded. He turned to Logan, bit out, “Get her back to the cave—and goddamnit, if one hair on her head is out of place, I’m taking it out on your ass.” Then, “Shawn, get Liam to the morgue. We’ll deal with—” His voice broke. “We’ll deal with arrangements tomorrow.”

  He didn’t wait to see if they followed his orders, just shifted into his dragon form and scooped Quinn up in his clawed arms. As soon as he had him secure, he shot straight into the air, fast as a rocket. She watched, heart in her throat, and realized for the first time just how easy he had been taking things during their late-night flights.

  Shawn gathered Liam’s broken, battered body into his arms, then flashed away, as she had seen him do during the fight. She was left with Logan, who looked almost as heartbroken as Quinn. The pain in his eyes was so great that she had a hard time looking at him.

  She glanced around at the street, shocked to realize that even after the deadly fight, the only thing out of place was the park bench she had knocked over herself. All other remnants were gone—even the blood that had spattered the concrete as the men fought.

  The bench looked obscene lying there, a reminder of everything they’d lost that night. She went over and started trying to tug it back into place. But it was heavy. The only reason she’d been able to move it to begin with was the adrenaline that had been pumping through her system.

  Logan came over to help her, and picked the damn thing up one-handed. As he settled it back where it belonged, he said, “Liam’s his brother.”

  “What?” Her horrified eyes met his sad ones.

  “Quinn. Liam’s his oldest brother. That’s why—” He didn’t finish.

  “Let’s get going. I want to check him out. He was already exhausted, and now I’m pretty sure he’s in shock. The two don’t make a pretty combination.”

  But as she started back toward him, she stepped on the syringe she’d noticed earlier. She picked it up, an ominous feeling building in her as the suspicions she’d had all week ran rampant in her head.

  “Quickest way is to fly.” He quirked a brow at her.

  “I know.” She eyed him grimly. “But I need to make one stop first.”

  “Where?”

  “I need to go back to the lab.”

  Two hours later, Phoebe closed the door to Quinn’s guest room after getting him settled with a tranquilizer. He’d refused the pill she had tried to give him, had insisted that he was fine. So she’d snuck up on his blind side and given him a shot instead. He was sleeping now, and considering how exhausted he was, probably would be for hours to come. When he woke up he’d be pissed, but she’d take pissed over catatonic any day.

  But now that he was settled, it was time to pay the piper. She had to find Dylan, had to tell him what she’d found. She was completely heartsick, the guilt a solid knot in her stomach. If she’d said something earlier . . .

  But she hadn’t, and Liam was dead. Quinn was devastated. And she was deathly afraid that it was all her fault.

  Shaking her head, she started down the hallway, following the directions Logan had given her to the war room, where Dylan and the others waited. Even the name was ominous, and she dragged her feet as she headed down the hall. Not because she was afraid of Dylan hurting her—he didn’t have that in him—but because she didn’t want to face him. Didn’t want to admit what she’d done.

  She’d gone only a few yards when a grim-faced Logan fell in beside her. She glanced at him in surprise, but didn’t say anything.

  “I thought I’d wait around and make sure you didn’t get lost.”

  “I’m not a coward, Logan. I wasn’t planning on running away.” She hadn’t told him what she’d found out at the lab, but he was no dummy. He’d seen the syringe.

  “I never thought that.” He put a bracing hand on her shoulder. “But when you walked out of that lab, you looked like you needed a friend. I can be that.”

  “You might not want to, after you hear what I have to say.”

  “I think I know what you’re going to say, and I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  He took a left at the end of the winding hallway, steered her away from the direction she’d been heading. “It will be okay, Phoebe.”

  She snorted. “How?”

  “I don’t know. But it always works out in the end. One way or the other, so stop looking like you’re going to your execution. I figure at least half of what you’re going to say is good news.”

  “Maybe. But the bad half is really bad.”

  He inclined his head. “C’est la vie.”

  He took a sharp right and she followed him. “Jeez, it’s a good thing you waited, or I would have ended up in Siberia or something.”

  “More like Yellowstone. But no problem. Stick with me, kid, and you’ll go places.” He grinned as he did the old Bogart impression, but his eyes were nearly as shadowed as hers.

  “So, how’s Quinn?” he asked after a moment.

  “Asleep. That’s about all I can say at this point.”

  “It’s enough.”

  She sighed. “I guess.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes, twisting and turning through the cave, passing literally dozens of rooms she hadn’t known existed. Under different circumstances, she would have been tempted to stop and look around at the beautiful cave formations, but right now, all she could think about was getting to Dylan.

  Telling him what she had just proven. If she’d told him what she suspected earlier, would Liam still be alive? Would the clan be stronger? Would—

  She heard him before she saw him.

  “What the hell were the four of you doing over there—twiddling your fucking thumbs?” Dylan’s voice boomed down the hallway.

  “We were doing our jobs.” A female voice, filled with outrage and sorrow.

  “Really? Are you sure about that?” Phoebe paused at the threshold, looking at Logan with shocked eyes. She’d never heard Dylan sound like that—so angry and sarcastic and unforgiving.

  “Damn it, Dylan! That’s not fair.” A male voice this time. She peeked in the room in time to see a
tall, blond man throw his arms in the air. “I swear to God, unless they know something we don’t, they didn’t slip past us. We had the place surrounded.”

  Dylan pinned Riley with a look meant to flay skin from bone. “Really? Surrounded? Then how do you explain the fact that sixteen full-grown dragons from the Wyvernmoon clan manifested on a street corner in Santa Fe this evening? Including, by the way, Jacob fucking LaFleur?”

  “We don’t know. That’s what we’re trying to tell you.” Travis spoke up. “We were there all night and nothing changed. No one left; no one came in. Unless they somehow found a way out through that blind spot we’ve been trying to figure out.”

  “Do you think that’s it?”

  “We don’t know, Dylan.” This from Caitlyn, who looked damn close to tears. Too bad he was all out of sympathy.

  “Well, that’s a hell of a costly I don’t know, isn’t it?” Unable to stand still for one second longer, he started pacing. It was that or wrap his hands around one of his sentry’s throats and squeeze until his eyes bulged out. Even better, he could do it to all four of them.

  “Liam’s dead. So are five Wyverns, including the heir apparent. And we’re right in the middle of a fucking blood feud. So, I’m going to ask you again: if you were watching them so damn carefully, how the fuck did they get here tonight?”

  The four of them—Travis, Caitlyn, Tyler and Riley—stared at him with blank faces. Maybe he was being an asshole, maybe he should back off a little, but he was too pissed off to tiptoe around their feelings. Six people were dead, and he now had to figure his way out of a fucking shit storm—never an easy proposition, but damned near impossible with the Wyvernmoons on the other side of it. The logical part of his brain was warning him that the only way tonight’s ambush could have happened was if there was a traitor among them, but he didn’t want to accept that.

  Couldn’t accept it, if it meant one of his people had betrayed him. And yet, could he really afford to turn his back when Liam was dead and the others who had fought with him were nearly so?

  “Dylan, we’re sorry. We screwed up, obviously.” Riley ran a hand over his face.

  “Really? That’s the best you’ve got? You’re sorry you screwed up? Why don’t you go tell Quinn that? I’m sure it’ll make him feel real good when he’s burying Liam in two days.”

  All four of them blanched, but none of them made another move to defend themselves. Waving a hand, he dismissed them, turned away. Then changed his mind before any of them could take a step. “Before you leave here tonight, you are to hand over all notes and observations you made on the Wyvernmoon compound to Shawn. You are also to tell him anything you’ve seen that isn’t in those notes. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” they replied in a chorus.

  “Good. And the four of you are relieved of duty until I can find out exactly what went wrong.” There were a few shocked protests from the sidelines, but he ignored them. If any of the guys wanted to talk to him, they could get in fucking line. “After you turn the stuff over, get the hell out of here. I’ll let you know when you’re welcome back.”

  To their credit, the four sentries did exactly as they were told, turning over notebooks and files to Shawn on their way out the door. None of them looked back, and he didn’t call them back. If he was making a mistake, he’d face them and apologize later. But no matter what had happened, they had screwed up, and they would be disciplined for it.

  Furious, frustrated and more than a little fucked-up, he looked around at the seven sentries he had left and roared, “If any of you have some idea of what the fuck went down today, now would be the time to speak up.”

  “I know what happened.” Phoebe’s voice rang through the huge room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Phoebe pushed away from her perch against the doorjamb and walked slowly to the center of the room, doing her damnedest not to be intimidated by the sheer magnificence of the place. Add in the furious scowl on Dylan’s face, and her knees were knocking together so badly, it was a miracle she made it to the center of the room, where he was.

  As she walked, she contemplated the words she’d been rehearsing for the past hour. He didn’t have to know that she had suspected this very thing, didn’t have to know that she’d sat on her suspicions. She could start with the syringe and work from there.

  But that would make her a liar and she wasn’t one, refused to be one now just because she didn’t want to face her lover’s wrath. Better to tell the whole truth and hope to God he still wanted her when the dust settled.

  When she finally made it to the middle of the cavernous room, she stopped in front of Dylan, trying her best not to dwell on the enraged look he gave her. If she did, she’d never get the words out.

  Taking a deep breath, she started from the beginning—or at least as close to the beginning as she deemed necessary. “For almost two weeks now, Quinn and I have been working on mapping the properties of the disease you brought me here to study. About a week ago, I realized that the reason we were having no luck was because the thing had false layers—the paralysis built over the immune disorders, which built over the hemorrhagic properties, which built over something else.

  “It was a breakthrough, one that had us thinking we were finally on the right track, because if we could cull through the others and get to the bottom part of the mutated cells, we might finally have a chance to figure out exactly what we were dealing with. We’d finally know what gene we had to break.”

  Dylan was watching her with interest, while looking more than a little puzzled, which just made her feel worse. He was a smart guy, and if he couldn’t figure out where she was going with this, it was because he trusted her. Swallowing thickly, she took a deep breath and prayed that what she had to say next wouldn’t change everything.

  “Quinn was really excited about the breakthrough, was working round the clock on it, as you know. But I was a little more leery. I had a bunch of suspicions that I didn’t share with him, suspicions that were proven tonight.”

  She paused, licked her lips. Wished she had a glass of water—something, anything to delay the next couple of minutes. But there was nothing, so she took a deep breath and spit it out.

  “Mutations like the one we were seeing are very rare in nature. In fact, in the eleven years I’ve been a doctor, I’ve never seen one so complex. Maybe you might see the mapping of one false trait. Maybe, maybe you’d see two. But three—nothing I’ve ever seen, nothing I could find in my research, showed me that such a thing was even possible.

  “Which led me to believe that this disease, this virus, whatever it is, is man-made. Or dragon-made. Whatever. As the week wore on, I became more and more convinced that someone had created this thing, that someone had deliberately done this to you.”

  As she wound to the end, she stopped speaking to everyone in the room and spoke directly to Dylan instead. “I almost came forward a dozen times to tell you my suspicions, almost told Quinn twice that. But in the end, I kept quiet because I didn’t have any proof. Tonight I got that proof.”

  A low murmuring started behind her, and she squeezed her nails into her palms in an effort to get through the next couple of minutes. I’m almost done, she told herself. Almost done.

  “At the beginning of the fight, you killed someone. You were in dragon form. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.” His magnificent onyx eyes were shuttered, his mouth tight.

  “I was watching from my spot under the bench, saw him try to stab you with something. I didn’t know what it was until he was dead, and in the confusion I forgot all about it, until Logan and I were standing on the street corner after the battle and I saw it lying there, where it had fallen. I took it back to the lab, looked at it. It was a syringe, filled with hundreds of cells mutated by the disease.”

  She closed her eyes, tried to get through the last. “The disease isn’t a natural occurrence. It’s a man-made biological weapon. It might not be contagious through normal channels, but that doesn
’t mean it is any less manufactured. I still don’t know how it’s been introduced. I have to do a lot more research. Since the bodies of the victims have been burned, I can’t exhume them and search for answers, so I have to do a lot more with the blood samples. Have to look at how it mutates in the individual blood and compare it to the sample we now have.

  “But what it all comes down to is that someone—I assume these Wyvernmoons who attacked us tonight, but again, that is just an assumption—created this disease with the abject purpose of destroying you. The attack tonight was their best shot at getting the virus into you. The king.”

  Chaos erupted behind her, but she raised her voice to be heard over the din. She wanted to make sure Dylan understood what she’d been reasoning out. “They’ve already killed your sister and your niece, those next in line for the throne. You have no heir, so if you contracted the disease like they did—if you died—there would be a power vacuum. Not forever, but certainly for a little while as the clan scrambled to figure out the hierarchy, leaving Dragonstar vulnerable to attack.

  “This whole thing—all those terrible deaths—was just their attempt at a coup. My guess is they’ve spent the past ten years testing the disease on others, watching and waiting for a chance at you. Maybe there’ve been other attempts on your life; maybe tonight was the first. You would know that better than I would. But it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  She stopped, because there was nothing more to say. She’d finally run out of words. Looking up at Dylan, she waited for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t take long.

  With each word that Phoebe spoke, Dylan’s world grew a little darker, a little dimmer, until all he could focus on was her and the terrible things she was saying. Biological warfare. Studied attack. Lana and Marta. Coup. All these years, the Wyvernmoons had been working to kill him and his people, and he hadn’t had a clue.

  His failures crashed down around his head, nearly brought him to his knees. He’d been working for ten years to figure out what Phoebe had surmised in two weeks. One week, if she was to be believed.