He closed his eyes, and immediately, the dragon’s face swam into his thoughts. Tranquility stole over him, and he believed that things might be all right. Julian imagined that the dragon was flying, her golden scales gleaming in the sunlight, and her strong, lithe body stretched out beneath him. The wind whipped around him as he imagined himself leaning up against the dragon’s neck, watching the world go by beneath him in between strokes of her majestic wings.
Julian wasn’t sure when the experience shifted from his imagined thoughts to a true vision, but he knew that it did. The experience became more real, the colors more vibrant, and the feel of the dragon beneath him more tangible. It was like he was really there, flying with Siobhan around the world. The ocean was below them, and then, out of nowhere, she dropped out from beneath him, letting him fall for a moment before sweeping beneath him again.
It made his heart lurch up into his throat, but when she caught him again, looking back at him with what he swore was a smile, he laughed, rolling his eyes at her. “Such a daredevil.”
The dragon nodded, then began to spiral downward as he hung onto her neck, bracing himself against the rush of the wind and feeling like there was nothing he couldn’t do. He lifted his arms up in the air, letting out a shout.
Siobhan puffed a cloud of fire, sending several in a row out into the air to circle around them. Julian laughed, continually amazed by her, and he leaned down, pressing a kiss to her neck. “You’re amazing,” he told her. And he was sure that she winked at him.
It was a vision of pure happiness, and it was almost crushing when the sound of his phone ringing in his ear jolted him out of the experience, slowly bringing him back into reality, where he loved her just as much and thought she was just as amazing, but where he didn’t have Siobhan safely with him. And he might never again.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Siobhan
Bowden Corporation loomed in front of Siobhan though it was still a good half-mile away. The building towered on the right, and the warehouse occupied the left side of the lot, the sign announcing the Bowden property sitting squarely in between the two structures. Even sitting in her car, far away, Siobhan got the impression that the place was rundown. The sign, clearly meant to be lit at night, only had a few flickering bulbs casting their glow into the darkness, and the buildings looked dingy and old, as though they hadn’t been updated any time soon.
Inside that warehouse, Melanie was scared for her life, and Siobhan wasn’t going to waste any more time going in and getting her out. There was no telling what Xander was doing to her.
She flipped on her camera and Bluetooth again, the glasses feeling out of place on her face. It was well-worth it though, to have Julian there with her.
“Copy?” she asked him quietly, when the technology had booted up. Getting an affirmative response, she unlocked her door and stepped out, hooking her gun in the back of her waistband and stowing her knife in the pocket of her shorts. “How’s the signal?”
“Not as good, but okay.”
She nodded, grabbing her bag with spare clothes and backup weapons and sliding it on both shoulders. “Okay. Anything new to report?”
“No. Not yet. Ophelia says that the best way to handle this is for me watch you while being connected to her, and then to keep reaching out to the psychic connection to catch any passing signals.”
That sounded fine to Siobhan, and she began to jog along the side of the road, staying in the shadows. Moira, Eamon, and Kean were all stationed nearby, ready to come in if she signaled. But the last thing that Siobhan wanted to do was surprise Xander and cause him to take out that surprise on Melanie. He was expecting her. He had a plan. She would use that plan against him somehow, because she was smarter than he was. And she was just better at this.
Besides. At this stage, this was more than a little personal.
“Siobhan.”
Julian’s voice was in her ear, urgent after a moment of silence while she ran.
“Go,” she said, urging him to continue. “You don’t have to wait to be cleared.”
“I’m getting blips,” he told her. “When I think of you and channel through Ophelia, I get images …just little ones. Here and there. I think—”
“Honey,” she said, interrupting him. “I love you, but I don’t need to know your process. Explain that part to me later. Tell me what I need to know.”
“When you climb over the fence, you’re going to be electrocuted at the top.”
She stopped in her tracks. “Well, shit, Julian. Are you serious? You saw that?”
“Honey, I love you, but you didn’t want to know my process, so you just have to trust me. There’s an electric pulse at the top of the fence that you’re going to want to climb to get inside.”
That was a fair retort. “Roger. I’m on it.”
She got closer to the fence that surrounded the industrial complex and noted that everything was well locked up. Xander knew how to get inside, no doubt. But she definitely didn’t, and if it wasn’t for Julian’s warning, she would be halfway up the fence right now.
Hesitating, she looked through the fence at the warehouse, noting all the reasons that Moira had thought it matched the one in Julian’s vision. “Can you see that?” she whispered to Julian. “Does it look like the right place?”
“It’s hard to see perfectly, but yeah. It definitely looks familiar.”
That was as good as she was going to get. “Okay, I’m going to fly over the fence. It’s the quickest way to skirt this fence without risking getting electrocuted or setting off alarms. What that means is that we’re going to be briefly out of communication, okay? I’m going to take the Bluetooth and glasses off and put them in my bag, along with my clothes and weapons. You won’t be able to talk to me again until I shift back and put all that back on.”
“So, you strip naked before you shift?”
“Yes. Otherwise the clothes wouldn’t make it.”
“That’s …incredibly sexy.”
She rolled her eyes, smiling a bit even still. “There will be time for sexy later, okay?”
“I didn’t get to spend enough time with you in bed that night …”
“Julian!”
“Sorry! Sorry. Ophelia’s blushing. Sorry. Not the time.”
“No, it’s not the time,” she agreed, but she was still amused. “Okay. Love you. Bye.”
Disconnecting her electronics, she set them carefully aside, stripped, and packed all of her things in her bag. There was no one in sight, and it was dark, without much light from the sign, so she didn’t worry about shifting, even if the sudden appearance of a large, golden dragon would be more than shocking to anyone who happened by. It was a risk she had to take.
Grabbing her bag with one taloned foot, she swept herself up into the air and soared over the fence barrier as though it didn’t even exist. Since she’d had to transition anyway, she decided to scope out the layout of the place from the air, using her dragon form’s excellent vision to see far the warehouse far more clearly than she had when she was standing just on the other side of the fence. She spotted the window easily—the only one the warehouse could boast. And she noted that the distance between the office buildings and the warehouse was no more than two hundred yards. If there was someone in the office building, then whatever was about to go down in the warehouse could draw their attention. But the offices all looked dark, at least the ones that she could see through.
Beyond that, she noted the large amount of industrial equipment in the warehouse’s storage yard, several trucks and an awning that covered stacks and stacks of boxes.
She didn’t know exactly what was produced at Bowden Corporation, but she was willing to bet that, based on location and the kinds of employees they had, it was something wasn’t quite on the up and up.
Siobhan landed very carefully on the open space behind the warehouse, slinging her bag onto her back as she moved slowly forward. Despite her large size, she was quite nimble, and she could cre
ep quietly if she needed to. Sticking to the shadows, she edged closer to the warehouse, until she reached the window, where she could peer inside.
There was a dim glow within that did little to illuminate the warehouse in detail, but it did show her the very distinct outline of a balding man hunched over, rifling through the contents of a box he was holding in his hands.
It was Xander. Siobhan had to duck away from the window quickly, as the man kept looking over his shoulder every few seconds, as though he was worried someone might sneak up behind him. She risked another look, but in her quick survey of the room, she couldn’t see Melanie anywhere. Did he have her somewhere else? Had they already changed the vision, because now he was using Melanie to entrap Siobhan? Was it possible that she wasn’t there at all, but stashed somewhere safely while he waited for Siobhan here?
She could only hope so, though she wasn’t convinced. The warehouse had to have plenty of space—although the room she was looking at was huge—that she couldn’t see from her angle. Melanie could be anywhere.
Backing away from the window, she shifted back into her human form, grabbing her clothes and weapons from the bag and putting herself back together. When she reconnected the Bluetooth and camera, she whispered to Julian, “Still there?”
“Roger.”
“Anything new?”
“I saw you looking in the window again.”
She realized, suddenly, that she had just acted out the vision that Julian had several days ago, where he was in the warehouse with Xander and saw a dragon looking into the window. It hit her just how big of a web all of them were caught in, and if she’d had the time, she would have spent several more minutes trying to process it, but she couldn’t.
Besides, if she did, she would have to acknowledge was she was ardently ignoring that Juian had a vision where she died, and that his visions had this scary way of coming true.
Unless someone worked to actively change them, and that was what she was there to do. After all, she wasn’t even in that neighborhood or at that house that Julian had seen. She was fine.
Completely fine.
“Siobhan? You’re just standing there.”
Julian’s voice sounded concerned, and it snapped her out of her momentary funk. “Yeah, I’m good. Circling, looking for an entrance.”
“Just like that? Just walk in on him?”
“That’s his game, isn’t it?” she muttered, beginning to slowly make her way around the side of the warehouse toward the front. “He’s expecting me. He knew I would come for Melanie. Well, I’m coming.”
“Isn’t that a little …obvious?”
Siobhan didn’t answer, not wanting to say anything at all as she moved to the front of the building and approached the door. She knew she was right about Xander expecting her and waiting for her when she saw that the lock was disengaged and hanging open. All she had to do was reach out and pull the door and it would open, letting her walk right inside.
She knew that it was a risk. That he might have something waiting for her. But her instincts told her that he wasn’t quite clever enough to pull off anything that she couldn’t beat him at, and they told her that he was damaged enough that what he wanted more than anything was for someone to listen to all the reasons that he was so justified in targeting Melanie.
Oh, he was definitely still going to try to kill her. Siobhan wasn’t naïve enough to think otherwise. But not before he had a chance to tell his story, and as it so happened, it was a story she very much wanted to hear.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Julian
Sitting in his hospital bed, watching Siobhan pull open the warehouse door and walk inside was almost painful for Julian. He was on enough pain medication that his shoulder wasn’t bothering him at the moment, and he hated the fact that such an injury was keeping him from being there by her side. She was strong and capable, but she was also his, and he needed to be with her.
“You’re getting anxious,” Ophelia said, reprimanding him lightly as she continued to hold his hand, trying to keep him open to channeling any psychic moments that occurred. “Keep yourself calm. Deep breaths. Slow breaths.”
“You try watching the person you love walk into this and not get stressed out,” he muttered, the speaker on his Bluetooth device turned off so that his conversation with Ophelia didn’t distract Siobhan unless he had something specific to say to her.
Ophelia modeled taking a deep breath, using her free hand to lift up on the intake and lower on the exhale. “Do it with me.”
Julian obliged her, but it didn’t make him feel any better as he watched Siobhan walking slowly through the front area of the warehouse, still in the portion that held the supervisor offices and breakroom and slowly approaching the large open space that would lead her directly to Xander.
He turned his Bluetooth on. “Wait.”
“What?” she responded immediately, her voice a whisper.
Closing his eyes, he tried to concentrate on the flash of an image he’d received. “The pole. I see the pole—she’s still locked to it. Melanie is. There’s something around her hands.”
“Where?”
“In the room where you’re going,” he told her. “She hasn’t been beaten. She’s gagged. Tied.”
The video image jostled, and then he saw Siobhan’s gun in her hand, held out, ready to defend her as she pressed against the wall, about to pass the point of no return. “Can you tell me anything about what he has planned for me? He wants me to walk in there—am I walking into something?”
Julian stared at the image on the screen, trying to see past it and into the future. Ophelia pressed his hand hard, using her power to strengthen his, but no images filled his mind, much less a true vision. “I don’t have anything,” he said, his frustration growing. “I can’t see what he has planned. I even tried to go back to the vision at the house with Ophelia. Nothing. I can’t control it well enough yet.”
“It’s okay,” Siobhan assured him, but he knew it wasn’t. “I’m going in.”
There was nothing he could say to stop her, so he only had to wait, watching the blurry feed as she moved toward the doors in his vision, then reached out her free hand, nudging the door open, her weapon the only thing that entered the room as she paused, waiting for some reaction.
When she got none, she went in further, her entire body slipping into the main, large area of the warehouse, allowing Julian to see the whole room, just as he had in his vision.
To her right, he could see the Melanie was there, just as he’d gotten a flash of her moments before. She was bound and gagged, her eyes wide with fear, and Siobhan was looking directly at her. Siobhan just have made some signal to Melanie, because the woman began to shake her head vehemently and nod toward her hands. On the video feed, he couldn’t tell what she was trying to say about her hand, but then, out of nowhere, a vision rushed into his mind, and he saw Siobhan clearing the room, then going toward Melanie, wanting to get her out of the room before she confronted a seemingly-missing Xander.
In the vision, the moment that Siobhan reached for Melanie’s bindings, the boxes just behind Melanie exploded, creating a firestorm that sent Siobhan flying backward and began to lap up all the dried cardboard and wood that was stacked around the room, slowly surrounding Melanie.
He was jerked out of the vision when Ophelia let go of his hand and slapped him across the face. When he opened her eyes, he looked at her in surprise, but she was intent, pointing at the screen. “Tell her. Tell her now!”
The transition process from vision to reality was still slow for Julian, but Ophelia’s sharp slap helped him to reorient faster. He flicked on his microphone and spoke quickly in Siobhan’s ear. “Don’t approach her! There’s a trigger in her bindings. If you try to undo them, there’s an explosion—a fire. You fall backward. I’m not sure how hurt you are. She’s almost definitely dead.”
Siobhan swore under her breath. “Fuck. He’s smarter than I thought.”
Julian w
anted to tell her to run now, while she still could. It was selfish of him, especially as he stared at Melanie, terrified and innocent in all of this. But he wanted her out of there. He wanted her safe. He wanted her here, where someone else could save Melanie’s life. How was he going to ever get used to the idea that her job could often put her in life and death situations?
“Stay calm,” Ophelia told him again. “Your visions just saved her once. They’ll only do it again if you stay calm and focused.”
“I’m calm,” Julian said, forcing that to be a true statement. “I’m calm.” To help center himself, he put his hand back in Ophelia’s, then stared at the video feed, looking for anything that would trigger another vision that could help Siobhan. Instead, he caught a movement that she wasn’t looking at.
As Siobhan crouched down, positioning herself to get a lay of the room without exposing herself to Xander sooner than she had to, she looked to the left, peering around a forklift and the boxes stacked beside it to see over to the right. While she was looking in that direction, on the far left-hand-side of the screen, close to Melanie, Julian saw something shift behind a double-wide dolly stacked with boxes. The footage wasn’t good enough for him see for sure what caused the movement, but where there was movement, there was life.
“To the right,” he whispered to her. “He’s hiding.”
Siobhan swung her head in that direction. She didn’t speak, as any sound on her part at this point was dangerous. But she shook her head, and Julian knew she was indicating that she didn’t see anything.
He didn’t either, the movement having been fleeting. Fear that he had imagined it almost made him tell her to forget what he’d said, but his instinct told him that he knew exactly what he’d seen.
“He’s there,” Julian whispered it again. “It’s an instinct. I can’t promise. But I think he’s hiding there, behind the left side of that dolly that’s near Melanie. Watching you. You need to take him by surprise and throw him off his game.”
Celtic Dragons Page 94
