Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon

by Heather Killough-Walden

  But he’d told her wasn’t going to harm her. And color her the most bizarre mish-mash of asinine colors in the world, she actually believed him. Sort of. Kind of.

  Maybe.

  Why does he have fangs? she wondered.

  To Anna, he didn’t feel like a vampire. She’d dealt with a number of their kind over the years. This guy was distinctly different. For one thing, he wasn’t so pale and hungry that his bloodlust was palpable. And for another, his eyes didn’t glow red like the eyes of vampires. They didn’t turn into traffic lights, one dimension of scarlet that chilled you to the bone. These eyes were multi-dimensional and vast, as if he held constellations within them.

  “If you’re accusing me of helping her, then I admit it freely,” Sterling suddenly said, yanking Anna’s attention from the man she had been not-so-subtly studying to her would-be savior. “I helped her disappear when she needed to,” Sterling clarified. “And yes, a part of that requires that she forget certain things as needed. But you have to know, dragon, everything I’ve done to her, I’ve done for her own good.”

  Dragon, Anna thought. That’s right. He called him a dragon before too. But he’s like no dragon I’ve ever met.

  And then the crux of what Sterling had just said actually hit Annaleia.

  Wait. My own good? What is he talking about? What the hell is going on?

  Her body was still trembling, though not as much. Now she was honestly more confused than frightened. If Sterling was here, he’d probably been smart enough to call in reinforcements even if she hadn’t been able to finish her own call. Which meant some manner of warden clan was no doubt close behind. That made her feel ambivalent in a way she would never admit to a fellow warden, but it also took the pressure off her a lot.

  Still, that didn’t mean she shouldn’t take every opportunity for escape that was afforded her. A transport spell was impossible still. She could feel his grounding magic draped heavily over the entire area. But she could still run.

  Anna gritted her teeth, contemplated for half a second more, and bolted into a full-throttle run aimed directly at her attacker’s broad back. At the same time, she raised her left elbow and braced it with her right palm against her left knuckles, giving her a make-shift “point” to drive into his kidneys from behind. But an infinitesimally split moment before she would have made impact, the dragon’s head turned slightly as if to give her an irritated narrow-eyed glance.

  And then he was side-stepping as she rushed past him. Her world came to a jarring halt when he wrapped his left arm firmly around her waist and yanked her off her feet to draw her back none-too-gently against his chest. It happened so fast, the wind was bludgeoned from her lungs. Stars entered her vision. Now we both have them, she thought deliriously. She moaned softly from the sudden discomfort but was offered no quarter. Instead, her arms were trapped against her and he squeezed, clearly wrathful.

  His lips at her ear were a confusing dichotomy of enthralling and terrible. “You aren’t going anywhere, Leia. Not without me – not ever again. So just do us both a favor and stop fighting me.”

  Through the haze of Anna’s strangely stirring anger and avidity, she heard Sterling say, “Go easy on her, Mace. Remember she has no idea that you’re you.”

  A drum beat thrummed through Annaleia, slightly nauseating, like a subwoofer turned up way too loud.

  Mace.

  Mace.

  Mace.

  “Stow it, Sterling,” the human dragon growled, a warning breathed across her earlobe. She smelled leather. Aftershave. Motor oil… him.

  The dragon’s grip tightened, and Annaleia squeaked from the pressure. At once her captor’s head turned back to her and his grip let up enough for her to breathe.

  Mace.

  The name turned itself over in Anna’s head. Over and over. But it made no sense.

  The problem wasn’t that she was unfamiliar with the name or its owner. She knew the name all too well. And she’d just been thinking about its owner. The problem was that she shouldn’t be hearing it right now. Sterling shouldn’t have used the name. Not that name, not here in this alley, not all these years later, and not to address the man who was holding her.

  She tried to look up and over her shoulder, but before she could, the dragon maneuvered her arms behind her back, forcing her to face forward again. Expertly, he twisted them up at an angle, bringing both arms together. She heard the jangling of metal. Cuffs, she realized.

  “Don’t you dare…” she whispered through clenched teeth. But he definitely dared, and she felt a little smaller when the metal clicked shut, cold and hard against her wrists.

  “You’re going to bind her, Mace? What the hell do you think she is? She’s not the bounty in a warden job. Think about this – Wait…” Sterling paused, and Anna realized the edges of her jacket had come open now that she could no longer hold them closed.

  She heard Sterling take a step toward them. “Why the hell is her shirt torn?” he demanded. Now his voice was raised, his accent deeper, and Anna felt the stirrings of powerful magic. “What did you do to her, Mace?”

  There was a rumble of a warning growl from behind her that resonated so deeply, the ground beneath her boots trembled. Anna tried to see what was happening, but in her latest tousle with the dragon, her wild hair had decided to obscure her view, and she had no usable hands with which to brush it out of the way because whatever he’d used on her wrists was meant for warden bounties; it was charmed with anti-magic properties.

  “I would never hurt her,” the dragon snarled. “Now lift the memory spell, asshole.” Much more quietly, he added, “Or give me one more excuse to fry you.”

  Annaleia had an image then, one of a massive dragon waking up, getting to its feet, and shaking out its mammoth black wings. Stardust cascaded off the dragon as it did so, and spiral galaxies tilted in the endless night sky. In her head, the dragon ran a long tongue over very sharp teeth that gleamed in the light of many moons. She could almost hear the beast thinking. All it needed was a reason. Just one reason to rip Jarrod apart.

  For the first time since she’d met Sterling, she actually feared for the powerful Nightmare’s life. Jarrod had never hurt her. In fact, when she took a second to consider it, Sterling had never really been anything to Anna but a friend. Yes, he was a dark friend and he was dangerous and he had a checkered past, but he was a friend nonetheless. With benefits.

  But Sterling must not have shared Anna’s fears because his only response to Ares was to address Annaleia instead. “Has he hurt you, Annaleia?”

  “What did I just fucking tell you, Sterling?” the dragon hissed. A shiver ran down Anna’s spine. The dragon had spoken directly beside her ear, and the sensation of it was not impersonal. It was far too much the opposite. Something primal awoke within her, something dark and delicious, something that made her feel guilty and crazy.

  “Jarrod, no!” she hastily told Sterling, ignoring her sudden sensual longing for her captor. Because it was nuts.

  And she genuinely feared that the two men would begin exchanging blasts of some terrible magic any second now and she would get caught in the crossfire. “I’m unharmed!” she reassured him. And after all, she actually was unharmed, but for her racing heart and destroyed blouse. Technically the torn shirt was her own damn fault.

  But her captor apparently lost what remained of his patience because he growled again and stepped back, affording him just enough space to act. As before, he moved so fast she lost her breath trying to follow the movement. He shifted his hold on her to the grip of one impossibly strong hand, and Anna had little air in her lungs with which to scream a warning when he raised his other hand outward in the telltale position of a magical attack.

  Time seemed to slow down, the way Annaleia had noticed it always did when disaster struck. Her theory was that Time was just bored. It slowed these moments down the way Hollywood so often slowed ninja fights or the bizarre confrontations of men in black trench coats in dream-like dimensions. T
he world began to roll forward at “Matrix” speed for no other reason than – Time simply wanted to enjoy them more.

  As she watched, mute and trapped in that pocketed stretch of events, her captor’s body braced as if for impact. The front of his black leather motorcycle jacket pulled open to reveal the sculpted lines beneath his black tee-shirt. At the same time, she caught a fleeting glance at some of the patches sewn onto the front of the jacket. Just as fleetingly, she thought one or more of them looked familiar.

  Still trapped in a syrup-motion world, she caught the provokingly familiar wave of leather and motor oil scent mixed with dark, cosmic power. The smell of magic spiked, becoming heady just before the dragon’s extended hand began to glow. Dark energy amassed in his open palm. It appeared as if entire galaxies did indeed obey his command because they swirled to life in his hand, and the void of space between those galaxies was shedding an impossible radiance.

  In the space outside the bubble of her reality, the sound of V-twin engines tore through the night. Anna noticed vague but fast movement in the shadows of her peripheral vision. The dark energy in the dragon’s hand expanded like the Big Bang.

  The light flashed too bright, and all supernatural hell broke loose.

  Chapter Twenty – Austin, Limbo, and Santorini, Greece

  (Sounds like a slightly twisted law firm. But that’s redundant.)

  Ares had been waiting before attacking Sterling for a good reason. He wanted and needed viable justification to destroy the non-human. Ares was a warden, and like everyone else wardens had rules. Laws, really. Not following them meant a hell of a lot more than jail time. It meant dealing with your warden clan leader, and then a sovereign. In the end, when a warden went rogue badly enough to kill one of his own, he then had a choice: Disappear, which was nigh impossible due to warden trackers and seers; or die. But really, right now? Ares could go either way.

  You took her from me. That’s reason enough.

  The darkness surging to life in the Monster warden’s outstretched hand was pure black dragon magic, visceral and extreme in nature. His patience was officially burned-through for Sterling, and his kind had never been known for their patience to begin with. Now he would see the Nightmare Warlock take a much closer likeness to his name, for a black dragon’s magic could be molded to do whatever the dragon wanted it to do – with enough practice. And right now, the dragon wanted to melt Sterling’s fucking face off and leave him in a puddle on the ground like the worthless slop he was.

  Mace.

  Antares readily knew the weighty authority of the voice that spoke firmly in his mind. Hence when his magic suddenly fizzled in his hand and evaporated away, there he knew the explanation. He wasn’t surprised it happened. Just disappointed.

  Not here, the deep, potent voice told him. Not now. The warlock called in help, and this is not our ground.

  The formidable words were telepathically spoken by someone strong enough to snuff out an ancient black dragon’s magic and enter his mind without invitation. Only one man could do either of these things, much less easily. Antares no longer bothered to question how Cain was able to do what he did; it would have been a waste of time, and Cain wouldn’t have told him jack anyway.

  Antares watched as whatever magic Sterling had been prepared to cast also fizzled, and the warlock lowered his own arm to glance warily around. The shadows were moving; people were emerging. Antares caught the scent of warden, pissed off and wary. But he also caught the scent of werewolf, vampire… Apex, Lurican… a few Dires, a pair of particularly notorious Gemini dragon human forms….

  Now he knew both warden clans were surrounding them; the one that protected Austin, and the one that would kill to protect Mace. By default, they would do the same to protect Annaleia because they would immediately recognize that he was claiming her then and there as his mate, and as such one of their own.

  I’ll deal with Sterling and Gray, Cain told him.

  By “Gray,” Cain referred to Graham Campbell, whom everyone that knew him simply called “Gray.” He preferred it anyway. Gray was the warden clan leader in charge of the Rigel clan, which guarded this region of the country, including the entirety of the state of Texas. Gray often passed himself off as the second-in-command in front of the sovereigns and other clans because he didn’t trust them. He wasn’t quick to trust anyone at all in fact, but for some reason he trusted Cain. Every warden who met Cain trusted him. Ares figured they all assumed Cain would have their backs when the chips were down. And they’d be right.

  Go and secure your girl, Mace.

  Ares went very still when Gray Campbell stepped around the corner to appear at the end of the alley in the dim of the lamplight. He went by “Gray” not only because of his name but because he actually sported full head of gray hair, and not many wardens lived long enough for that.

  Gray’s tall figure was haloed by the lamp post behind him, obscuring his features in shadow. A beat later, Cain stepped appeared in front of Ares, separating him and Anna from Sterling, Gray, and the others. The Monsters clan leader glanced over his broad shoulder at Ares. Their eyes met.

  I’ll check in with you later.

  It was a dismissal and a final command. Irrespective of Ares wanting to stay and get this figured out himself – and maybe just rip off Sterling’s arm for good measure – he was now under direct orders to do otherwise. Besides, Cain was right. This was not the place, and now was not the time.

  Ares didn’t bother responding with an affirmative. Instead, he wrapped his arms more tightly around Annaleia’s already struggling form and muttered the words of a powerful spell.

  “Don’t let him transport!” someone shouted. “She’s one of ours!” At once, the Rigel clan’s magic users moved in. One in particular had already finished his incantation, and Ares immediately felt a grounding spell whip around him like invisible metal coiling ropes.

  But it was too late. If Cain wanted Ares gone, he was damn well leaving; that was just a fact. As if to prove as much, the grounding ropes that had coiled invisibly around him frayed and tore everywhere at once, shredded by a million unseen claws. The spell disintegrated to dust, freeing him up just as his own transportation magic took hold and the world began to waver.

  The last thing he saw in the alley before the spell filled his vision with the swirling colors of a transport tunnel was Cain glancing back one final time, his blue-burning gaze glowing hot as a thousand suns.

  Annaleia shrieked her outrage at being abducted against her will, and Mace’s mind spun. One of ours…. What had the warden meant by that? It echoed in his mind, further fodder for an already bountiful conversation he would damn well have with Annaleia.

  In his arms, her struggles became desperate. If he let her go, she would probably run right through the transport wall, most likely to her death. She was no doubt aware that in normal, black-hearted human circumstances, her chances of survival diminished significantly once she allowed her captor to take her to a second location. But these weren’t normal circumstances and he was not a black-hearted human.

  He was a black-hearted dragon.

  The moment his boots made contact with marble, Ares released his hold on Annaleia and stepped back, almost needing the space between them as much as she did at that moment. At the same time, he waved his hand and the cuffs he’d slapped on her disintegrated.

  Leia wobbled a touch and lurched away from him just like he knew she would, but before he could give in to the need to reach out and steady her, she did it herself. She was fast, regaining her footing in record time. A second later, she went very still and warily looked around.

  He took another step back, giving her the space and time he knew she required.

  “Where…” she began, but her voice trailed off. There was far too much she wanted to know, and she wanted to know it all at once. He knew that feeling too.

  Slowly and unsteadily Leia circled the room with her enormous amethyst eyes, absorbing as much as she could of their surroundings
. When she finally faced him again, her gaze locked on his, where he trapped it with his will. He might have to give her space, but he couldn’t go on without possessing at least some aspect of her.

  As if to thwart him further, she took another step back.

  Two steps forward, he thought wryly.

  There was now a good distance between them, around six feet or so. It was suddenly too much for his tastes. But he would wait. He could do this. She wasn’t going anywhere. He may have removed the cuffs, but the building was warded.

  And she didn’t want to leave. Not really. She thought she could hide that fact from him. She was so damn wrong.

  Ares watched her not only with the eyes of a dragon, but a warden. They observed meticulously and with a perceptive vigilance that caught every breath, noted every tiny movement, catalogued every small and fleeting expression. In this way he gauged her, strategizing her thoughts and desires before she would even experience them.

  He knew she wasn’t as afraid as she had been. He knew she had felt something when he’d drawn her close to him in the alley. He knew her memory of him was there, just beneath the surface. She couldn’t escape it any more than she could him.

  When she finally licked her lips – a move that caught his own breath in his lungs for a split second – and cleared her throat, he already knew what she was finally going to ask. The way she stared at him in disbelief gave it away.

  Leia began to talk, but it came out tight and strangled. She closed her lips, cleared her throat a second time, and for good measure retreated another step. Ares was pretty proud of himself for letting her do it. Every added inch between them now set his nerves on a new, freshly sharpened edge.

  “Hhh- I mean… he called you….” She licked her lips again. Ares ran a stiff hand through his hair. When he did, he noticed her pupils expand. Oh, she knew him all right. She remembered what he had done to her that night, and she was feeling that memory on a subconscious level.