She was pretty sure wolf shifters didn’t get this kind of treatment. He must think she was so spoiled.
“Thanks for bringing me back,” she said. “Want to come in? Hang out?” She was tired but didn’t want to let go of him and her old life so soon, even if she did have a flight back to Seattle early in the morning.
“Ah, no, but thanks. And you’re welcome.” He kissed her on the forehead then sighed heavily. “Been thinking about your situation…”
Her heart double beat, but she didn’t want to get her hopes up.
“You’re going to have trouble leaving your job. I can’t see why the Bloodkin wouldn’t let you quit, but they will hold on to you somehow. Before you make any announcements to your boss, maybe test the waters first.”
“I can’t stay there,” she said. “You have no idea.”
“I might, actually, but we’ll work it out. It’s possible you’ll need to slip out of your current life and disappear. As in, change your name, the works. We’ll need a strategy, though, so until then, tread carefully. We’ll find a way.” He chuckled. “Bloodkin. Of all things, Ember.”
He kept saying we.
Her eyes were burning again. She knew he’d be there for her.
She turned to unlock her hotel room door, pushed it partially open, and held it there with her foot. “Send me the info for Sadie,” she said. They’d all take care of each other.
Bryan had already started down the hall to the elevators, but he lifted a hand.
It’d been seven years, and she’d missed him. To let him know, she yipped and howled softly, like old times. Their little vagabond pack.
Bryan didn’t turn around, but he threw back his head, opened his arms, and howled from his gut.
***
Thane marveled at the car Matthew had procured for him. The last time he’d driven an automobile had been in the nineteen forties, and it had looked nothing like this. Yesterday, he’d asked for something fast, an automobile worthy of an Ealdian. The Audi R8 before him was a long, sleek bullet, low to the ground, with a grill on the front as if it were baring its teeth. It was black, of course, like an Ealdian dragon, with silver details. The workmanship clearly superb.
“My lord Thane—”
Thane waved Matthew silent. He could transport himself. He would transport himself.
Powers were in motion, tactics in play. He couldn’t hesitate a moment. Whoever had sent Emerson Clark had already made the first move, and Thane had been so long out of the world he hadn’t even known that an Emmerich still lived.
Sixty years had passed while he’d been in self-imposed isolation. The solace had been a necessary balm to the agitation and flashes of fire that had sometimes clouded his mind. He’d missed the power and strength of becoming the dragon—missed it like a parched man missed water, even—but there was a point in every Bloodkin’s life when he knew he might not have the will to shift back. He might lose himself to the dragon.
He’d already lived longer than most. The dragon within could be denied only so long, and then it would claim his mind and force its way to the surface. He had to be on Havyn, the isle where old dragons went to fly and flame and fall to ash, when that occurred, or as with dragons in eons past, he might ravage the land and bring the condemnation and violence of humanity down upon the Bloodkin. Dragons would be hunted again.
But Matthew’s present concern about his state of mind was unwarranted. Thane would not shift today, nor at all until this business was complete. And he could not allow himself to be chauffeured from place to place, either. His allies would doubt him. He was old, not helpless.
Besides, a car like this promised a singularly pleasurable experience.
“Does it fly?” Because that might be a problem.
Matthew sighed. “No, my lord.”
Thane smiled. Then he’d just have to figure the thing out.
“Do you have a map?” he asked Matthew. It was some distance to his destination.
The day was bright and crisp, a sweet cacophony of sensation bombarding him. A deep breath, and energy sang through his veins. His dragon reveled in response. All this, it wanted. All this and more.
“I’ve already given the car the address,” Matthew said. “You need only follow its instructions where to turn and so forth.”
“You sound frightened.” Usually, Matthew kept all traces of dread out of his voice.
“My lord Thane, I am terrified.”
***
The Orvyn stronghold was nestled in a remote corner of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, surrounded by sequoias that had scraped the sky longer than any dragon had. Standing on the cobble stoned circular driveway in front of the entrance, Thane ignored the alpine sentries and frowned at the long scratches on the side of the automobile.
A three hour drive, and he was grieved that he’d damaged the thing. He’d come to love it in such a short time. The car’s power was not only located in the engine; it seemed to permeate the entire vehicle. Somewhere there was a human engineer who dreamed of flying like a dragon, and he’d gotten very close with this car.
A Bloodkin came to stand beside him and also surveyed the damage. From her scent alone, he knew her. Lena Orvyn, Carreen’s sister.
“Did you kill anyone driving?” Her melodic voice was the same, too.
“Not yet,” he said, turning toward her. “Though Matthew may be dead from excessive worry.”
Lena wore the passage of time well. Her russet hair curled over her shoulder, and her gold eyes still sparked. She’d never used cosmetics, and except for a slight pallor today, had never required any, either. Her pants were long, but he guessed she was wearing high heels because she was taller than he remembered.
He took her hands in his. “Have you been to see them?”
Lena was the only one who’d be just as devastated as he was at the discovery of Carreen’s and Rinc’s remains. Together, they’d searched, followed every rumor, but their efforts had come to nothing.
“I will when the mediation is settled, when I can take my time to say my farewells.” She sounded tired. Six hundred years’ worth of uncertainty. “After so long, what’s a few more days?”
“She was holding the Heolstor sigil.”
She cocked her head slightly in rebuke. “Anyone could’ve put it there.”
“I was in a dispute with Gerard at the time.”
“And he’s always had a temper, I know.” She touched his arm to turn him toward the house. “Come inside, and I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered about your mediator.”
“Then you agree that her sudden appearance means something?” He’d called Lena immediately upon Emerson Clark’s departure for her “dinner date.” Matthew hadn’t been able to hear anything she and her man had said over the din of the restaurant, but he had managed to take a photograph on his mobile, the small device that had rarely left Matthew’s person these past few years.
“Honestly, I don’t know what to think,” Lena said.
Thane didn’t like going indoors—his dragon balked at small spaces—but Lena was a dragon as well, so her entryway was vast, clean, and cold. She brought him down a short step and to the left into a large room of soothing grays with roomy leather benches for furniture. She kept her treasure hidden, but somewhere here in her lair, there was plenty of it. A dragon didn’t advertise.
“Do you know who controls her?” he asked. Lena had ties to Godric Tredan, one of Triad that governed the Bloodkin Assembly and, therefore, a source of unadulterated information.
“No. There’s nothing like that. No Blood family at all, which is simply shocking. Somehow, as a child, Emerson ended up in the human social services. Her tie to the Bloodkin was evidently not discovered until she applied for financial aid for university.”
There were many things wrong with Lena’s narration, but he started with the obvious. “Financial aid.”
“That bothered me, too.”
A dragon without means. Unheard of.
Lena produc
ed a piece of paper—the financial aid form, it seemed. Page five asked the applicant if he or she were full or part shifter. Emerson had the yes box checked, and on the line provided to note the kind of shifter, she’d written—scrawled, more like—dragon with a question mark. The Bloodkin would’ve confirmed it once notified, so there was no question any longer.
“Where is the rest of this form?”
She handed him a folder. “It has to be a fabrication.”
Thane paged through the sheaf. Emerson’s middle name was Adele. Much better. Her address at the time had been in Reno—he’d have to check that—and she was young, just twenty-five, according to the birthdate on the form. A dragon’s age was always hard to determine on sight. “Parents deceased.”
“They didn’t find their rest on Havyn,” Lena said. “They must have met human deaths.”
“Yet they named her Emerson,” he said. It was her name that bothered him the most.
“Just so.”
“And then kept her existence secret from the Bloodkin?” Give her a dragon family name, but deny her contact with others of her kind? “And yet she knew her origins or she wouldn’t have made herself known for this absurd financial aid.”
There had been that question mark next to her shifter designation. Maybe Emerson hadn’t known for sure.
“What did you think of her?” Lena asked.
Thane recalled his impressions of Emerson Clark. “Direct. Capable.” Puzzling. She’d laughed at him. “Fearless.”
“Then a potential enemy?”
No, Emerson was… “She seemed to have the recklessness of youth. She’s smart, but not suspicious.”
Lena’s brows went up. “You liked her.”
“She was there and gone before I had a chance to come to any conclusions, but Matthew was ready to defend her after one minute.”
“Pretty?”
Thane narrowed his eyes. “I have considered that she was sent as a bribe.”
Lena nodded her head. “This Emerson for Carreen. And Emerson could bear an Ealdian heir.”
Thane shook his head. “I don’t think she has the guile to persuade in that way. Not knowingly. Not yet.” Though it would be amusing—no, interesting—to watch her attempt to seduce. “And remember, I told you she said she had a dinner date. What of him?”
As if on cue, Lena opened another file and handed him a large page with the photograph of Emerson at dinner with the young man, the same picture that Matthew had shown him on his device last night. In the photo, Emerson’s smile lit her eyes, her complexion flushed with joy. She’d leaned in to hear what her equally avid partner was saying.
“Bryan Rand, Wolfkin. He escorted her back to her hotel room.”
A wolf of all things. “You see?” Thane waved at the photo. “Everything about her is nonsensical. A dragon who lies with a wolf? I suppose pigs fly and the moon is blue, too.”
“She’s a modern woman. She can take a lover before settling on a Blood union.”
“Women have taken lovers in every age,” Thane cut back.
Lena flinched. “Forgive me. That was clumsy.”
Thane waved her apology aside. Carreen had proved her loyalty when she’d attempted to shift in order to protect Rinc. Whatever troubles they’d had between them, she had been the fierce mother he’d wanted for their child.
“Hear me,” he said. “Whatever the scheme behind Emerson Clark’s sudden appearance, this will come to war.” They’d burned his son, disfigured his wife.
Lena gave a little laugh. “The last time you tried to avenge my sister, you scorched hundreds of innocents from the earth. And your dragon wasn’t even ascendant then. If the Night Song calls to me—and brother, its call is a beautiful and bitter reckoning I haven’t the strength to deny much longer—then that same music must be in your very blood now. Just think: another year, and you would’ve been Thane no longer. You would’ve been a shadow above the clouds, senseless to anything but the burning stars.”
“I will do my duty by Carreen and Rinc.”
“So you will, but this age has weapons that can destroy dragons.”
“Every age has weapons that can destroy dragons,” he told her. “But the old ways were more brutal than anything modern man can conceive.”
“Every age is savage, or the Bloodkin wouldn’t endure. Our allies are stirring—I have word from Algar and Pearce already—though I doubt you will need them. The news has spread that you’ve abandoned your seclusion.” She lifted her hands dramatically. Only she would dare. “Thane Ealdian prowls the earth once more. Shutter your houses. Bar your doors. Offer him gold and women to satisfy his cravings. A black dragon is like the very devil himself.”
He didn’t laugh. “Emerson Clark will not assuage my anger.” No matter how much he was tempted. “If my enemies think she will, it might be best for me to end the Emmerich line once and for all.”
CHAPTER 4
Emerson hit send on her e-mail to Bryan regarding the arrangements she’d just made for Sadie. After her flight back to Seattle this morning, a quick stop to freshen up at home and then another to her favorite coffee spot, she’d come in to the office and taken care of it first thing. Family first. It was how she was going to start taking her life back from the Bloodkin.
Happy for the first time in a long time, she ducked out of her office to grab a cookie. Someone had left a platter of homemade chocolate chip on the table in the break room, and the buttery smell had sneaked across the hall, under her nose, and eroded her willpower. She wanted one, and they were there for everyone—including, she presumed, the office freak.
The hum of office chatter muted as she stepped out of her door and into the open space containing a small warren of cubicles, around which the individual offices stood. She didn’t have to look to know that gazes would be tracking her movements. For pity’s sake, her Blood status wasn’t contagious.
Over the past year she’d worked for the company, everyone had always been very polite to her, but no one had grown friendly. It didn’t help that her office was set apart from the others who had started working there around the same time. Spacious and beautifully decorated with modern lines and minimalist color, her office had a wall of windows overlooking the city skyline. Regardless of the weather—blue skies, cloudy, stormy—the view was incredible. And she hadn’t earned it. Didn’t want it. She would trade the whole thing to be invited to lunch by any of them. Her invitations had all been politely turned down. Every last one.
The break room was empty, a large table at its center where she’d once tried eating to put herself in everyone else’s traffic pattern, but they’d just stayed away—actually preferred to go hungry—until she’d left.
Grabbing a napkin, she selected a fat cookie. It had that pretty golden goodness to it—gold was her favorite color—and she could tell it was the chewy kind. Chewy chocolate chip cookies were the best. But now that she had it, she was tempted to save it for later. Hoard it for the right moment. The thought made her grin. Maybe she was part dragon, after all.
She walked back into her office and to her desk, and the door shut behind her.
Someone cleared his throat, and she startled, whirling around.
An unfamiliar man in rumpled khakis and a half-untucked pale-blue button-down stood staring at her. He was middle-aged, his hair thinning. He had a slightly crooked nose, red face, and was sweating profusely.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“The remains found at Kingman Hills belong to the Heolstors,” he said quickly, as if by rote.
“I’m sorry, but who are you?” She might’ve held out her hand, but she was holding her cookie.
“It doesn’t matter who I am.” He wrung his hands. “I’ve been sent to help you. If you want to get out of this alive, you will report that the remains belong to the Heolstors.”
Get out of this alive? Her heart thumped hard. She moved to her desk phone, dropped her cookie, and hit the button for reception. “If they are Heolstor rem
ains, then that’s what I will say.”
Teresa picked up right away. “Yes, Ms. Clark?”
“I need security. Immediately.” How had he gotten past their desk on the ground floor anyway?
“Tell no one,” the man repeated.
“Did the Heolstors send you?” She hated her job. That Ransom had seemed a little shifty.
The man heaved a shaky breath, as if struggling for no apparent reason. “No, a friend sent me.”
“I don’t like your friends.”
“No. This is a friend of yours.” He lifted the untucked part of his shirt and pulled a black gun from his front right pocket. “Don’t tell anyone.”
Her body flashed cold with terror as she ducked behind the desk for protection, but she kept her gaze on him. “Stop! Please. What do you want? I’ll get it for you.”
Gun in hand, the man hesitated a moment as if suddenly adrift.
Emerson glanced at the phone, hoping security was on its way. She tried to stall. “I don’t know what friend you’re talking about. Tell me the message again.”
The man seemed to find his resolve and put the gun to the underside of his chin.
“No! Plea—” Her ears rang with the bang that followed, then all sound was replaced by a high-pitched tinnitus as he fell to the floor.
Emerson dimly registered people running into her office, a few entering for the first time ever. Movement swirled around her. Faces loomed, eyes wide.
“Call 9-1-1!”
She read the shapes of the words on her boss Mr. Fraser’s mouth in morbid wonder. With the ringing filling her head, she couldn’t hear, but somehow questions bombarded her.
“Who is he?”
“Do you know him?”
“Did he say anything?”
“What did he say?”
Her boss’s strong hand took her by the arm and pulled her out of her office. Her balance went funny as she stepped over the legs of the fallen body. The red-and-gray splatter on the wall behind him was surreal, the tangy smell of his blood strangely rich and alluring. She was going to throw up.
Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 33
