Carefully, Moira opened her eyes again and turned her head, glancing around the room. She knew immediately what Felicia meant. They were in a concrete room with nothing on the walls or the floors and no windows. It was the perfect place to carry out executions—of any sort. And of any length.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” Moira promised, though she was in no position to make such vows. “What situation are you in, for transitioning?”
“The chains are laced in an herb called foxglove. It’s incredibly toxic, and it saps our strength.”
Moira grimaced, having expected as much but hating to have it confirmed. “Damn it. Do you know anything else? Have they said anything? Do you know the plan?”
“They left us here and haven’t been back since,” Felicia said. “It’s Darren and Vaughn. The others …I don’t know where they are.”
Swearing under her breath, Moira, the effects of the chemicals she inhaled receding further, began to pull at her chains. She felt nothing but the sharp bite of metal against her skin—nothing that might suggest a toxic herb was affecting her. And then she had a thought.
“Felicia, is foxglove toxic to humans or to shifters?”
“What?” Felicia asked, not understanding the question. “Shifters are humans.”
“No,” Moira said, working to keep her voice low. After all, there was no telling who was in the room. “I mean, is foxglove something that is generally toxic to humans, and therefore to you, or is it toxic because it affects shifting specifically?”
“Oh,” Felicia said, though she still sounded a bit confused. “It’s generally toxic to humans. It weakens them.”
“Can you feel its effects on you?”
“Of course. That’s why I haven’t shifted.”
But Moira still felt nothing. She smiled, getting the first hint of good news since Grady’s confession love for her. “I’m not human, Felicia.”
“Of course you are.”
“No—I’m not.” Moira looked over at the girl and shook her head, making her vision spin slightly. “My ancestors were cursed to be actual dragons, and from that dragon form, they became what I am now. I live most of my life as a human, obviously, but if we’re being technical—I’m a dragon in human form. Not a human in dragon form. I don’t think the foxglove is affecting me.”
Felicia’s eyes widened and darted toward the door. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” Moira whispered. “Do not breathe a word. When they come back in here, they won’t realize that I can shift, and that’s how we’re getting out of here.”
“Are you sure you can shift though? Really sure?”
“No,” Moira admitted, biting her lip. “But I feel like I can, and my gut is pretty strong these days. Just follow my lead, okay? I’m going to get us out of this.”
“Don’t underestimate him. Either of them.”
“I won’t.” She had underestimated them once when she had gotten in the car with the so-called Grady who had driven her here, presumably to her death. She wasn’t the kind of girl who made the same mistake twice.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Grady
Grady came barreling down the stairs to his office building, launching himself out into Boston’s cool night air and running as fast as he could for his car. He had to get to Moira’s house as quickly as possible. Any piece of evidence that he could find there might be the difference between her life and her death.
He almost didn’t notice the man who stepped out from behind his car, fumbling for his keys as he hurried to the driver’s side, and it wasn’t until the last second that he recognized Darren’s face. Freezing in his tracks, he locked eyes with the man, even as the realization that he wasn’t going to be able to get away from him settled over him like a dark cloud.
“What did you do to her?” Grady demanded, taking a step backward. “Let her go. Take me. I’m the one who killed your brother, so take me and let her go.”
Darren’s lips curved in a half smirk, half snarl. “That’s very noble, but the fact of the matter is—I’m selfish. I want both of you.” Reaching out, he grabbed Grady and dragged him closer until Darren’s hot breath blew across Grady’s cheek. “Everything you have is going to be mine, and do you want to know why?”
Grady didn’t answer, turning his head away from the stench of Darren’s breath.
“Because I can,” Darren said, and then he grinned as he jerked his knee up as hard as he could, landing it squarely between Grady’s legs.
Pain shot through him, making his stomach churn and a cold sweat break out over his skin. He doubled over, sinking to his knees as the worst pain he had ever experienced moved through his body and settled low in his gut. Gasping for air, he threw out a hand, trying to land a blow against Darren’s knees to fight back.
All Darren did was stumble one step back, and then he was on Grady again, beating him about the head this time.
“This will be better for you if you don’t fight,” Darren hissed.
Grady’s mind was dominated by the terrible sensations pulsing through him, but he knew enough to understand that Darren couldn’t risk shifting into anything dangerous here, and if he shifted into something small to get away, he was no threat to Grady. That meant they were more evenly matched in this public arena than they ever would be if Darren got him alone.
He wasn’t going to make it easy for the man—there was no chance.
Darren reached for him, trying to haul him to his feet, and Grady turned his head, sinking his teeth into the man’s forearm. Screaming, Darren reeled back, a skin flap hanging from his arm and blood beginning to pour from the wound. Grady spat out the blood in his mouth and glared up at Darren through pain-hazed eyes. “I will fight you every step of the way, until I die.”
Eyes flashing, Darren hit him upside the head again, sending Grady reeling backward. “Then you’re bringing this on yourself.”
As Darren advanced to strike again, Grady kicked out with one foot, landing a blow to Darren’s stomach. The shifter doubled over, and Grady grabbed his long, filthy hair and pulled, upsetting Darren’s balance and sending him tumbling to the ground. They rolled over and over together, each trying to get the upper hand. Darren was strong—unnaturally so—but what Grady couldn’t match in strength he made up for in adrenaline, fury, and desperation.
Grady wished a hundred times that someone else would leave the building and see the fight in the parking lot, call the police, and give him a reprieve, but he knew that there were only a few people still at work and that they were likely to be there for some time yet. He was on his own, but his strength was waning, and Darren was a viscous fighter.
Darren hit him again across the head, and Grady’s vision went dark. He could still feel Darren, but he felt faint, his breath coming in labored gasps, and he knew that he was going to pass out. “Fuck you,” he whispered, as he made one last attempt to hold his own, and then everything went black.
Chapter Forty
Moira
Eyes closed, Moira focused on her body, imagining her strength, imagining her transition, imagining her speed. She desperately wanted to transition, knowing it would break the chains off her and give her the ability to escape this concrete prison, but her instincts told her to wait and play that card when the time was right.
It seemed like hours had passed, but she knew that she had probably been awake for less than one. Felicia had fallen quiet, her spirit crushed by Darren’s actions, and Moira didn’t press her to talk. The less they spoke, the less chance there was of them being overheard. She worried that she had already said too much when she had told Felicia that she didn’t think the foxglove was going to impact her.
As her mind played over the same thoughts again and again, a loud sound from just beyond the door she could barely see out of the corner of her eye made her jerk her head in that direction. She held her breath, her eyes briefly meeting with Felicia’s to confirm that she had heard it too. For better or worse, something
was about to happen and that something might determine how many people made it out of this situation alive.
The door to her prison slammed open, and Moira couldn’t help the gasp that slipped from her lips as Darren appeared in the doorway, immediately locking eyes with her. She only returned his gaze for a moment, her eyes fixing instead on a beaten, limp Grady hanging from Darren’s hand and slumped against the floor.
“Grady!” Moira tried to sit up without breaking her confinement, but there wasn’t enough room in the chains. She was on the verge of snapping right through them when Darren unceremoniously tossed Grady toward her, his heavy body slumping near her feet.
“I thought you two might want to spend your last moments together,” Darren said, snarling his words. “Your boyfriend has earned himself a very painful death by the way.” He held up his forearm, which was ripped and red with dried blood. “This is his doing, and I’m going to make sure that he feels the pain tenfold—while you watch.”
Moira wanted to put her arms around Grady and try to wake him, but she had to try to engage with Darren while he was here. If he left, she had no idea when he would come back, and if Grady was bleeding internally or had a head wound, then he needed hospital care as soon as possible.
“Wait,” she said, as Darren started to close the door. “Wait, don’t go.” She had no idea what her strategy was, and just had to follow her instincts. “I don’t know how you did all of this,” she said, adopting the bewildered female approach that she thought might play up to his massive ego and his enjoyment of abusing others. “How did you find out? How did you know the code that I had set up with Grady? I thought we had it all figured out—I thought we were going to pull this off flawlessly. And now it’s like you’ve turned everything on its head.” Purposefully, she made her eyes wide and blinked more often, so that her lashes would hint that she was an airhead. “At least explain it to me. I think …if I understood …”
As intended, Darren smirked, his eyes holding such intense disdain that it cut Moira inside, despite the fact that she had produced it herself. She hated playing dumb girl to his evil mastermind, but if it worked, then it was worth it.
“You really thought you could pull one over on me?” Darren said, walking back into the room, his arms folding over his chest as he stared down at her. “Nobody ever pulls one over on me. You’re learning that lesson the hard way. As we speak, I’m working on rounding up your little friends to get rid of them too. See, I think I like Boston. I think I like it a lot actually, and I can’t have them interfering. I think I’m going to start living most days in Grady’s form, in fact—just until I can liquidate all of his assets and take his millions for myself. Then I’ll force one of my shifters to take on his form before I kill him, and Grady will die. Well, he’ll die again. I’m going to kill the original here today.” He kicked his foot against Grady’s limp arm as he said it, with a smile that reached all the way to his eyes.
“You wouldn’t,” Moira whispered, feigning innocent shock. “You can’t be that evil!”
As she predicted, he gave a dark chuckle at her assessment. “Nobody is better at being evil than I am. You should learn that now, so you won’t be surprised when it’s time for me to kill you all.”
She gulped, squirming in her chains as she pretended to try to scoot back from him. “Please …maybe I could work with you. Maybe I could help you. I’m stronger than you think …at least when I can transition.”
“I know how strong you are,” Darren said, crouching down and looking her in the eye. “That’s why I’ll never let you live.”
Moira forced herself to look into his dark gaze, her soul shriveling slightly at the total vacancy she saw within him. “Where are we?” she whispered, forcing herself to stick with the strategy she’d adopted. “I …thought we knew where you lived, but this isn’t where you live. Is it …?”
“No, you imbecile,” Darren said, standing up again. “Of course I don’t live here. This is a warehouse that I’ve had my eye on for some time.”
“Oh, to live in…?”
“No!” Darren was impatient enough with her purposefully ridiculous questions that he forgot not to give her too much information. “To store things in. To kill people in. It’s secluded and mostly abandoned, and who doesn’t need an asset like that?” He sneered at her, rolling his eyes. “You’re lucky that you’re pretty and strong, because intelligence isn’t your strong point.” For the first time, he turned toward Felicia. “You don’t even have strength and beauty on your side,” he said cruelly, walking toward her. “I cannot believe you were stupid enough to cross me. Did you not think that I would figure it out? Did you really think that you could do this?”
“You didn’t figure it out,” Felicia said quietly. “You had to be told.”
Inwardly, Moira cheered the girl on for standing up for herself against the brute who had abused her, but she worried that she and Felicia were not working the same strategy. And she worried that Darren might react and hurt her further before Moira could figure out the right moment to orchestrate their escape.
“Are you getting mouthy with me?” Darren asked, stooping low over Felicia, so that he was right in her face.
Felicia spat on him, and Darren reeled back, scrubbing the spit from his face before raising his arm and backhanding the girl. “You just bumped yourself up to the top of the execution list,” he said, reaching down and yanking Felicia up so hard that her chains pulled out of the ground. “You bitch.”
The small woman wasn’t flinching or responding to Darren, clearly certain that she was going to die and not about to beg or play into him in anyway. Moira admired her strength, but she wasn’t ready to accept that fate for any of them yet. As Darren battered Felicia, trying and failing to get a response out of her, Moira looked at Grady, her heart hurting at the sight of the bruises developing on his face and arms.
Reaching her foot out, she just managed to nudge his cheek gently, and she was rewarded with a faint flicker of his eyes. She nudged him again and got the same reaction, then again, and she was suddenly looking into his perfect eyes.
She shook her head at him, trying to communicate that he shouldn’t move, but he just stared at her, and she wasn’t sure if he was shocked to see her, when he may very well have thought he never would again, or if he had some sort of injury to his head.
“Darren!” Vaughn, the man who had taken her from her house, suddenly appeared in the doorway that Darren had left halfway open. “What the fuck are you doing, man? I’ve got chaos going on out here with the others. You gotta step in or Nina is going full-on rogue.”
“Bring her in here then,” Darren said, not turning his attention away from Felicia, whom he was now shaking. “We have enough chains for everyone, and I’m not particular about how many have to die.”
“Darren,” Vaughn said, shaking his head. “Look, I get why we need to kill the dragons and the rich guy, and Felicia betrayed us. But the others? They’re just upset, man, and I would be too if you weren’t talking to me about what was going on.”
Darren whipped his head around, glaring at Vaughn. “Oh, you would be too?”
“Yeah, I would be.”
“Whose side are you on exactly?” Darren demanded, tossing Felicia back to the floor and turning toward Vaughn. “Because that sounded a little wishy-washy to me, Vaughn. That makes me just a little bit nervous.”
As Moira watched, conflict played over Vaughn’s face. It was clear that he didn’t want to cross Darren and that he was willing to do some seriously questionable things to stay on the man’s good side, but he did have his limits—and he was reaching them. Moira began to tally it up in her head. Felicia; herself; the other shifters who, apparently, were on the verge of chaos; Grady, if he was able; and the other dragons, if they could find them. There was the potential for Darren and Vaughn to be on their own, fighting against all of them, and Darren might not even have Vaughn.
She had to act. Now. She had to act before Darren decide
d to kill Grady or Felicia, before he could secure Vaughn’s loyalty, and before he could somehow bully or lie his way into the good graces of the other shifters again. There was the small fact that she didn’t know where she was or how secluded they were or what the fallout of her actions might be, but she couldn’t delay any longer.
Moira didn’t try to be subtle. Completely abandoning her scared, confused woman act, she jerked both of her arms and feet up at the same time, snapping the chains with a resounding crack. Without hesitation, she grabbed the chain around her middle section and pulled it apart without breaking a sweat, and she did it all in fewer seconds than it took Darren to hear the sound of her chains breaking and whirl around.
She was on her feet in an instant, adrenaline and righteous rage flowing through her as she prepared to face down the man who had hurt so many people.
As one last dig at him, she made her eyes wide and blinked her eyelashes. “Oh, I’m so scared of you. I don’t know what to do with my strength sapped. You figured out my whole plan and I just …I just don’t know what’s going to happen.”
His eyes narrowed, and she smirked, tossing back her wild red hair as a show of defiance. “This is between me and you now,” she told the man. “Leave the others out of it. You beat me—there’s nothing standing in the way between you and what you want. But you have to face me first.”
A slow grin began to curve Darren’s lips. “A one-on-one battle? It’s cute that you think you can win that.”
“If you’re so sure, then what’s the risk?” Moira challenged him, crossing her arms over her chest. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Grady starting to sit up, and she shifted on her feet, discreetly nudging him and hoping he would take it as a signal to stay as still as possible. She didn’t want Darren focused on anything but her. “Take me on. Beat me, and you get to say you slew a dragon. Then you get to have your way here, and there’s no one who can stop you. My friends have no idea where I am, I’m sure. How would they?”
Celtic Dragons Page 46
