The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance 2

by Trisha Telep

  No one behind us, either, which I figured was about the best luck we could hope for at the moment. I didn’t suppose it would hold out forever. Tonight I had put a giant target on my back. I had been in business with powerful, dangerous people long enough to know that a stunt like the one I’d just pulled would not go uncontested.

  “You look tired,” Drakor said from the seat beside me.

  He’d been quiet most of the trip. Pensive, I thought, having caught him staring out into the dark more than once since we’d been on the road. I knew he had to be as exhausted as I was; he’d confided in me during the drive out of Port Phoenix that his body was depleted after being starved of food and water during his captivity. Breaking out of the crate had drained him even further.

  But I didn’t think it was any amount of physical fatigue that had him so still and brooding. His mind was burdened, perhaps his heart as well.

  “I’m fine,” I told him. “And we need to keep moving.”

  “No, Nisha.” In my peripheral, I saw his dark brows lower over those shrewd canary-yellow eyes. “I want you to have rest. Find some place to stop the vehicle now.”

  There was an air of command in his voice that almost made me obey simply on instinct. Almost. “We can’t afford to stop until we’ve put more distance between them and us. They could be following even now. We have to push onward.”

  He reached across the cab, his strong, elegant fingers closing over my hand where it was locked in a death grip on the wheel. “Nisha, we go no farther until you rest. It is not a request.”

  I gaped at him, astonished by his arrogance. “Last I heard, I was the one calling the shots around here. Unless someone died and made you king, I’ll thank you to sit back and let me handle the situation.”

  He removed his hand from mine and I found I instantly regretted the emptiness left in its place. Drakor settled back into his seat and gazed out the window. “My father passed 157 years ago, after centuries of a peaceful, noble reign.”

  I threw a sharp look at him. “Excuse me? Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  He sighed remorsefully and glanced back at me. “My father’s death made me King of the Strange. Or would have, if I’d actually been worthy of accepting that mantle of responsibility. Either of my elder brothers would have been far better suited, but they had both been killed in wars with mankind by the time my father took his last breath. I was little more than a stupid boy, unfit to rule.”

  I hit a rut in the ruined old road and had to jockey to keep my rig on course. When I was able, I stared at him again, incredulous. “If you haven’t assumed your father’s place in all this time, who has?”

  “I was twelve years old when I relinquished my power to his court. I believed our kind would be better served by someone other than me.” He grunted then – a soft, wry exhalation. “Apparently someone in my homeland felt the need to make certain I could never change my mind. I suspect it was a member of the court who betrayed me to the person who hired you.”

  I was outraged – not only by the thought of Drakor being sold out by a traitor, but also by the notion that he would have so readily accepted it. “So, you are willing to let yourself die rather than risk failing as king?”

  He looked at me for a very long moment, a storm seeming to brew beneath the burnished gold of his gaze. “I was willing.”

  “And now?” I asked.

  “Much has changed since I was shackled inside that box and shipped across the ocean to this place, Nisha. Now I find myself questioning quite a lot of things.”

  Although he was contemplative and hard to read, I sensed the flicker of determination beneath his calm demeanour. He would make a dangerous adversary, I had no doubt. His kindness and intellect would make him a formidable but fair ruler.

  “It seems to me that you could better serve your people by being a leader, Drakor, not a martyr.”

  “Indeed?” He smiled at that, only the subtlest curving of his sensual mouth. “I think you may be wiser than any of my long-lived counsellors and advisors, Nisha the Heartless.”

  For some reason I didn’t care to examine, it bit somehow to hear him refer to the cold reputation I’d prided myself on for so long. I wasn’t heartless – not when it came to him. I looked at Drakor and felt as though my entire being was made of awakening emotion and sensation, not the logic and fear and mistrust that had been drummed into me from a very young age.

  I cared for him.

  If I didn’t watch my step, I worried that I might very easily find myself in love with him.

  “Do you have somewhere that you can go?” I asked him, needing to steer my thoughts back to the situation at hand. “It won’t be safe for either one of us to be on the road any longer than we have to be.”

  He nodded, grim. “There is a hidden enclave of my kind in this region of the new continent. They haven’t yet been discovered by man. No human has been near their settlement, but if I asked it of them, they would provide us shelter.”

  I wasn’t sure I was ready to rely on the Strange for any form of protection, but I didn’t tell him that. “Do you know specifically where they are?”

  “The place was once called Colorado.”

  “It’s not far from here,” I said, recognizing the old name from the time long before I’d been born, when most of this land had comprised unseen borders hemming in and uniting areas known as states. “I can take you there.”

  Drakor seemed to consider for a moment. “In the southwest region of that place, there are ancient dwellings built into the side of a cliff. Tribes of humans once lived there, before their modern brothers drove them out and used the dwellings as parkland. Now the Strange hold it.”

  I nodded and looked back out to the road. Even though I wanted to put another couple of hours behind us before we stopped to rest, my arms were heavy and my eyes were burning from staring into the darkness.

  “I have some old maps in the back,” I said. “Maybe we should pull over and have a look.”

  Drakor gave me a silent nod of agreement. I slowed the truck and detoured off the empty highway, taking us toward a thicket of woodlands several hundred yards from the road.

  I lit a candle lamp and brought it over to where Drakor was studying one of the dozen or so historical maps I kept on hand in my rig. I sat down next to him on the floor.

  “This is about where we are right now,” I said, pointing to the area above a ghost town known, a couple hundred years ago, as Flagstaff. I moved my finger across the map and his sharp gaze followed the northeasterly, diagonal path I indicated on the worn and brittle swatch of paper. “This is the old state border of Colorado. The area you told me about would be roughly around this corner. The roads between here and there aren’t the greatest. It will probably take me a couple of days to get you there.”

  When he looked up at me, I felt a question burning in his unsettling eyes.

  I slowly shook my head, answering before he could ask me. “I won’t be staying once we arrive there. I can’t. I’m human and I wouldn’t belong.”

  His black brows lowered. “What if I said I wanted you to stay? What if I demanded it?”

  I smiled, unwillingly pleased by his possessive, imperial tone. “I would remind you that you may be King of the Strange but I’m not one of your subjects.”

  He reached over and cupped my cheek. “What if I told you that I don’t think I’ll be ready to let you go in a couple more days?”

  I barely resisted the urge to turn my face into the warm cradle of his palm. With a strength I didn’t realize I had, I drew away from his touch and put my focus back on the open map. “We’ll need to stop for fuel sooner than later. Usually someone in the villages has a tank or two that can be bartered for—”

  “Nisha.” He cast aside the map, forcing me to look at him. “If you don’t accept my help, then where will you go? You can’t go back to your home. Your old life is gone now.”

  “I know,” I said. “I can’t go back to anything I
knew before. Word of what happened tonight will travel fast. All I can do is keep moving now, figure out how to make my way. And I will. I’m not afraid of the unknown, Drakor. I know there’s bad in the world. I’ve survived the worst. I won’t run and hide from anything ever again.”

  My eyes stung with memories from my past. I tried to blink away the tears, but he saw them. He stared at me, his strikingly handsome face tender. “What did you lose, dear Nisha?”

  I shook my head, ready to dismiss the question before it could tear my heart wide open. But Drakor’s eyes were warm and caring, his hands comforting as he stroked my hair. The memories swelled inside me until I couldn’t hold them in.

  “My mother,” I began, then took a steadying breath. “She was killed when I was four years old. She and my father and I were living in the country at the time. One day hellhounds broke into our home and chased us out to the woods.”

  “Hellhounds.” Drakor’s expression hardened. “Ah, God, Nisha. They are vicious creatures, the worst of our kind.”

  I knew all about them, of course, as did most of mankind. Hellhounds lived for blood sport and were most commonly employed as trackers. With their hideous double-heads, razor-sharp claws and incredible speed, there were few that could escape them – human or Strange.

  “My father ran with me in one arm, his other hand wrapped around my mother’s wrist.” I blew out a quiet sob. “One moment she was with us, the next, she was gone. She turned back and tried to lead the hellhounds away from us. I can still hear her screams in my nightmares.”

  Drakor gathered me to him and I didn’t have any strength to resist. I leaned against his chest, listening to the steady drum of his heartbeat. His arms were strong around me, his lips gentle as he pressed a kiss to the top of my head.

  “My father was destroyed over the loss of my mother. I think seeing me only made it worse because I reminded him too much of her. My father blamed himself for putting her in danger, but he never really told me what he meant. We lived in fear of all the Strange after that. He drilled into me that I could trust no one. That no matter what, I should always only look out for myself.”

  “And so out of your despair, you arose courageous and strong,” Drakor murmured as he lifted my face up toward his. He kissed me, long and slow and deep. When his lips left mine, I saw hot need in his gaze. “You are such a beauty, Nisha. You are as exotic as the night for which you were named.”

  I reached up and stroked his bold, square jaw. “My mother named me in her language. She was called Jariat.”

  Drakor brows arched almost indiscernibly and he gave a soft, amused-sounding grunt.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” he said, caressing my cheek. “It’s a very old name, from a very old people. A beautiful name.”

  “Is there anything you don’t know?”

  He leaned down and kissed me once more. “I have been around for a long time. One cannot help but learn a few things. But you . . . you are a marvel to me, Nisha. I am amazed by all I’m learning from you. I never dreamed I could care so deeply for a human.”

  “Nor I, for one of the Strange,” I whispered, my heart aching with emotion, my body thrumming with desire.

  Our lips met again, with a passion neither of us seemed able to deny. Drakor undressed me with maddening care, his mouth tasting each naked inch of my skin. His own clothing came off in a hurry, and then he was poised above me, his thick shoulders and arms bunched with muscles, his bare chest smooth as velvet under my roaming fingertips.

  I put my hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down on top of me. His mouth claimed mine with fierce need as our bodies came together, hot and yearning. He filled me up, gave me more pleasure than I’d ever known.

  We tossed about in a slick, delicious tangle of legs and hands, insatiable for each other, even after we’d both come down from a shattering release. He was wild and magnificent, and even if I’d spent a thousand nights in his arms I knew I’d still crave more. I hungered for all of him, and for all we’d never have again once we reached our destination and said our goodbye.

  As we lay together side by side, he stared into my eyes with the same unspoken longing I felt weighing down my own heart.

  “Nisha,” he murmured. “My God, I never expected you. I never expected to feel any of this. I shouldn’t feel it. You are human, and I am not.”

  “I know.” I nodded, tried to smile even though it hurt.

  He brushed his lips across mine, a sweet, tender kiss. “You are human . . . and I don’t care. I want to be with you, wherever you need that to be. I love you, and none of the rest matters.”

  I swallowed, uncertain I’d heard him correctly. “You what?”

  “I love you,” he said, and kissed me again, more firmly now. A claiming kiss that burned through me like fire.

  I started to tell him that I felt the same way, but then I heard something terrible ring out in the distance. A low howl, coming from somewhere in the dark outside. Then another, and still another.

  All the blood seemed to drain from my head and settle into my stomach as cold as ice.

  Drakor looked at me, his gaze stark. “Hellhounds.”

  We barely had time to dress and jump back into the cab of my truck before the beasts’ howls had grown dangerously close.

  I turned the engine over and swore when the damned thing sputtered and choked. I tried again. It coughed to weak life, rattling as though it were on its last legs.

  And that’s when I noticed the needle on the fuel gauge.

  “Shit.” I reached into the dash and tapped the temperamental old gauges, hoping the needle had merely gotten stuck as it so often did on relics like the one I was driving. After a few knocks, it did move a couple of degrees – deeper into the negative. “We’re practically out of fuel.”

  In my haste to get us out of Port Phoenix, I’d neglected to do even the most basic systems check. And, in my state of fatigue after so many hours behind the wheel, I’d managed to drive us smack into the middle of nowhere. With hellhounds on our tail.

  Another bone-grating howl went up somewhere in the darkness outside.

  “I think we can make it another ten miles or so. We can head deeper into the wilderness and try to outrun them.” I grabbed the gearshift and started to put the rig into drive. Drakor’s hand stopped me.

  “Nisha, there isn’t time. The truck will only be a hindrance in the end.” He took my hand in his and pulled me across the seat to slide out the passenger side door with him. “Let’s go.”

  “We’ll never make it,” I said as we raced away from the sound of the gaining hellhounds. “Are you strong enough to fly?”

  “I am,” he replied. “But I wouldn’t be able to carry you very far yet. We have to run.”

  I tried to pull myself free of his hold, but he wouldn’t let go. “Drakor, listen to me. You have to get away. You have to leave me here and save yourself.”

  He swore something dark and nasty and pulled me into a faster pace. The forest was pitch black, a maze of tall pines and thorny bramble. We tore through it, uncertain where we should go except as far away from the hellhounds as possible.

  But each second that I felt hopeful we might elude them, it seemed the Strange beasts sounded closer. Their howls and snarls echoed in the woods, coming at us from several directions.

  “Drakor, please,” I whispered fiercely. “We can’t both get away from them. They’re going to catch up to us.”

  “Then I will stand and fight them,” he muttered tightly, not slowing his gait.

  No sooner had he said this than one of the two-headed hounds erupted from out of the darkness and launched itself at him. I lost his hand in the sudden crash of colliding bodies. I heard the gut-wrenching sounds of the struggle, the snapping of animal jaws. The tearing of vulnerable flesh and sinew.

  “Drakor!” I cried, anguished to think of his suffering.

  All at once, flames shot up into the night. In the abrupt illumination, I glimp
sed Drakor in his dragon form, the thick forest in front of him, nothing but endless night at his back. He hissed a plume of fire at the attacking hellhound, incinerating the beast. Another one came at him with both sets of jaws gnashing and was similarly torched.

  Two of the awful creatures were down, but three more were right behind them.

  And Drakor had already shifted back into a man.

  He was panting and sweating, strain showing in the taut lines of his face. My heart sank like a stone in my breast. The shift had drained him of his power.

  “Nisha, behind you!”

  I swung around and met with two sets of feral eyes staring out at me from the heads of an enormous hellhound who stood just an arm’s length away. It bared its terrible teeth and fangs, massive hind legs coiled and ready to spring into a leap.

  I couldn’t run. There was nowhere to go. I went for my gun, but it was too late.

  The hellhound leapt at me.

  It knocked me off my feet, sent me reeling through the dark night air. I waited to feel the crushing blow of the ground coming up to meet my spine. It didn’t materialize. Instead, I fell and fell and fell . . . into a black void. A chasm so deep and wide it was all I could see.

  “Nisha!” Drakor’s voice roared from somewhere high above. It echoed off the stone walls of the abyss that surrounded me. “Nisha, no!”

  All my fears of flying – that inexplicable terror at finding myself airborne – pressed down on me like a lead weight. I plummeted faster.

  From somewhere deep inside me, I knew it was my fear that would destroy me. Not the hellhound that had pitched over the ledge with me and had since dropped out of my sight. Myself alone.

  I thought of my mother, who sacrificed herself so that my father and I could live.

  I thought of my father, who died of a broken heart because fate had torn her from his arms.

  And I thought of Drakor, the Strange and noble man I didn’t want to love but couldn’t live without. I didn’t want him to know my father’s pain. Selfishly, I wanted to spend the rest of my days in Drakor’s sheltering arms, however long destiny might grant us.