Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Chapter Twenty-two – Santorini, Greece

  He’s a dragon.

  Annaleia’s mind whisper-screamed at her, almost as if it were afraid of being overheard. Anna squeezed her eyes shut tight and tried to gather her wits. She was bent at the waist so the world wouldn’t spin, and the added blood to her head helped a little. The only problem was that she could hear it roaring through her ear drums.

  This is him, her mind added, barely audible over the rush of blood in her ears. This is Ares. Real and alive and not old and gray and… he’s a dragon.

  The questions she had for him were far too plentiful. How did one put a list like that in any kind of order? She couldn’t. So by the time she’d caught her breath enough to ask anything, she settled on, “If you’re Antares, why can’t I recognize you?”

  She still didn’t open her eyes or look up, but she didn’t need to. The man who claimed to be Ares answered her from across the room, where he was watching her intently. She could feel his gaze on her like a solid grip.

  “Because Jarrod Sterling fucked with your gray matter,” he told her, his tone low and hard.

  Very slowly, Anna chanced a look up from her bent position, keeping her arms braced against her knees for continued balance and support. She still didn’t recognize the man standing a few feet away, but he’d called her Raindrop.

  No one ever called her that. That, alone, was Ares.

  She had to admit that Ares and the stranger also bore the same height, same build, same dark, dark hair and galactic eyes. They shared the same bone structure, charismatic pull, and even the same… cruel edges.

  But for the life of her, she couldn’t match the face before her with the face from her past. They were like similarly charged ends of a battery. They refused to meet.

  And apparently it was Sterling’s fault.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Probably because he knew I would search for you and the bastard wanted to keep you all to himself.”

  Annaleia tried so hard to process that, to think of Jarrod Sterling being that kind of person. The problem was, it wasn’t all that difficult for her to imagine Sterling being that kind of person. He was an incubus and a warlock. There were a lot of shadows there.

  “Ares” dug his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and regarded her with keen eyes. “So…” he began with circumspect. “Fifty years.”

  She didn’t say anything. She was squinting her eyes, trying desperately to see through whatever Sterling had done.

  But Ares went on. “Five decades ago, you disappeared on me, Raindrop” he said. She eyed him from behind a lock of too-long bangs that she hadn’t trimmed in a while. It was shot-through with streaks of gold from the Australia sun. Seeing it made all of this seem even more unreal.

  When she managed to see around it, she saw that Ares was peering at her left temple where her birthmark rested. Something secret flickered in his eyes.

  Or something not-so-secret, she thought. If he really was a dragon, then he’d heard of the Withered by now. And if he was Ares, then maybe he was finally figuring everything out where she was concerned.

  He extracted a hand from his pocket and rubbed the stubble on his chin, but every muscle in his body was taut with checked power. It was patently obvious that he was feeling a good deal of emotion and controlling it well. Especially if he was a dragon. They weren’t known for negotiation.

  But the tiny display was mouth-watering for Annaleia. An act as inauspicious as rubbing his chin forced his toned body to ripple. It was ridiculous how perfect this guy was.

  She wondered which kind of dragon he would be.

  A black dragon, she thought. Obviously. Antares could only ever be a black dragon.

  He took a quick breath, drawing her from her inner thoughts. “Let me see if I can take a stab at what went down after you…” His hand paused on his chin, ever-so-slightly clenched. “Left me that morning,” he continued coldly, his eyes still glued to the moon-shaped mark on her temple. He lowered his hand and shoved it back into his jeans pocket, which tugged the waistband of the jeans down just long enough for Anna to see that V of muscle on his lower torso.

  She swore internally and hated herself for the fierce attraction she suddenly felt. She was behaving like a lunatic.

  The human dragon finally turned away from her and paced a few feet, putting more safe distance between them.

  With his back to her and his tone softer and enigmatic he said, “You were in an accident, weren’t you? One that should have left you dead but didn’t. Not permanently, anyway.”

  She almost confirmed that for him with a “Yes,” but decided to remain quiet and listen instead. Let him talk. That was sometimes how you learned the most.

  He went on. “But you had a heads up that the accident was coming. And I’m wagering it was Sterling who gave it to you.” He paused, his substantial back muscles tensed. “So you died, but the magic in you brought you back. My guess is Sterling knew all of this would happen, and he offered his help in exchange for… something only you could give him.” There was an acidic edge to his voice now, like a knife’s blade dipped in poison. Smooth, but deadly. “Of course you caved. After all, it’s only sex.”

  She waited for him to turn and pin her with some kind of cosmically powerful gaze, but he didn’t. Oddly enough, when he had his back to her, he absolutely looked like the Antares she remembered, and now that she could concentrate on it, he had the same voice. It had always sounded to her like beautiful savagery dressed in fine tailoring.

  “Sterling kept his end of the bargain; he’d be a fool not to. And it must have been something seriously vital he leveraged. But he would have done anything – bled out a hundred times – to wager that deal with you, Raindrop. Trust me.”

  Anna found she was trembling again. But now for a different reason.

  He lowered his head, every muscle along the back of his body flexed taut. “Then you kept your end. And you slept with him.”

  Anna winced. What he didn’t say was so pregnant with rage, it felt like her ears were bleeding.

  “And then for whatever reason he had you believing, you decided you needed to disappear. Which of course he promised to help you do. The Nightmare Warlock cast up a whole lot of magic and you vanished.” He grew quiet again before his words took on a razor’s edge. “For fifty fucking years.”

  Anna flinched and straightened as if she’d been struck.

  He turned his head toward her, just enough to glance back at her over his broad shoulder. She froze again.

  “He fed you all kinds of lines, didn’t he? About needing to cover your tracks and stay hidden. Especially from the likes of me.” Now he turned around fully, and pinned her with the entire weight of his gaze. “And you believed every word.”

  Yes. It was true. All of it.

  Anna had no idea where she got the courage to reply. “He… did tell me I needed to hide.” And yeah, it was mostly from you. She tried to look away, to stare at the floor. It felt like he were reading her, ripping open her internal book of pages and scouring each and every word.

  She could feel magic all around her. She wasn’t stupid; she knew that if he was a dragon and this was his home, she stood no chance of defeating him in any capacity. Not in battle, not in escape, not even in a struggle of wills. Not here.

  A dragon’s abode, no matter what or where it was, became a part of his “den,” and as such, it expanded his power. A dragon’s den was not only warded from the outside world, it was bespelled within. If he’d wanted to, he could have knocked her out with a single word. Sent her flying into the wall with another. And there were other things he could do too… sexual things. Pleasurable things. Things she couldn’t help but think of in the wake of her bizarre attraction to him.

  She’d known a dragon or two in her life. The fact was, if he was one, then really he was being considerate. Generous, even. Dragons were not known for their social graces, especially not black dragons. And she just knew
that he was a black dragon.

  Still, she couldn’t pull her eyes away from his when she wanted to. He held her in his sway, very literally. Damn, she thought helplessly. Being caught in the gravitational pull of that gaze was doing crazy things to her. Give me a break!

  Anna suddenly felt a little dizzy. Her captor’s expression became enigmatic, his eyes flashed beneath the chandelier lights, and then he was turning away from her again.

  Anna rubbed her flushed face with a cold hand, and then dropped her hand to stare at the white marble beneath their boots. She licked her lips and closed her eyes. “But… it wasn’t just Antares that Sterling warned me away from,” she said softly, wanting to give him something, anything, in exchange for his mercy. She wanted to show him she could be reasonable. Appease the dragon. “He showed me a whole new world. One with… unimaginable things, deadly things. Lots of them. And he made it clear that some of them would do deadly things in order to get their hands on… well, on me. Because of my gift.”

  Her captor was silent for a stretch before he said, “He was right about that.”

  Annaleia swallowed hard and said, “I know.” Then she grew brave and asked, “Are you really a dragon?” She kept her head down in case he decided to prove it by transforming. She might take it in stride if he did, but she couldn’t be certain, not just then. She wasn’t quite up to par.

  “I am.” She heard his boots cross the floor. Then she heard the gentle clinking of glass and ice cubes. “Leia… why don’t you come here and have a seat?”

  She looked up again to find him standing behind one of the sofas in the room, and in each hand he held a drink. One of the drinks, she recognized. “Rosemary-gin,” she whispered, suddenly feeling light-headed again.

  “If I remember right, it’s your favorite… At least it was once.” The look on his face told her he absolutely knew for a fact that he remembered right. Which was more evidence he was telling the truth about being Antares.

  No one else in the world knew she liked rosemary-ginger cocktails. In fact, she’d never seen anyone else in the world drink one, much less make one. But Ares used to make them for her all the time. He was the one who’d introduced her to them.

  Annaleia gazed at the glass for a long time before she closed her eyes, exhaled, and slowly stood. She pinched the bridge of her nose in the hopes of staving off the swimming stars. “How do I break whatever spell this is that Sterling put me under… so I can see you? Or recognize what I see?”

  But when she opened her eyes again, his expression had gone from one of quiet frustration and thin patience to one of vague amusement. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  Anna blinked. “Seriously? That’s what I wouldn’t believe in all this?”

  Now he laughed. It was a pleasant sound. Very much so. He shook his head. “Come have a seat, Leia. I promise we’ll get to it.”

  No one else called her Leia either. She’d always gone by Annaleia or Anna. Only Ares had called her Leia. Definitely only Ares called her Raindrop.

  She took a deep breath and let it out in a shaky sigh. “I was taught never to take an open drink offered to me by a stranger,” she said, looking from him to the drink in his hand.

  “I know,” he told her. “I’m the one who taught you.”

  Fuck, she finally thought. Yes. Yes, he was.

  “It’s clean,” he said as he moved around the sofas and took a seat at one, placing the drinks on the coffee table between them. “But of course you may feel free to help yourself to anything in the bar.” He leaned back, draping his sculpted arms over the back of the couch, and nodded at the bar across the room. It was a tall, pristine glass and marble structure that looked like it had been built into the architecture of the home. The cherub angel and dragon carvings along its edges smoothly transitioned into the stone of the wall behind it. The entire piece appeared exceedingly expensive, as did the rest of the villa.

  “There’s a new sweater for you there,” he indicated, nodding at a white knitted garment that had somehow appeared on the cushions of the loveseat closest to her. It was carefully folded and looked as soft as distressed cashmere. “And I have beer,” he added with a killer smile. “It’s unopened. In the fridge.” He nodded a little lower, indicating the stainless steel ice box behind the bar.

  Anna nodded absently but stayed where she was, hugging her frame and trying to figure out what to do. Strange that she wasn’t more frightened. Then again, there’d be no reason to feel frightened with Antares. Dragon or no dragon.

  He watched her silently, his eyes glinting over the rim of his own glass, as she deliberated her choices. Finally she pulled out her cell phone and looked down at the bars. There were none of course.

  She got an amused little smile from him for her efforts.

  In the end, she returned her phone to her pocket, grabbed the folded sweater off the end of the sofa, and asked, “Where can I go to change?”

  His smile became a grin and a chuckle, because he knew damn well she was using it as an excuse to leave his sight. But what could he do? He wanted to be a good host, didn’t he?

  He was still grinning when he said, “Down that hall and to the right.”

  Anna turned on her heel and followed his directions. At least it would give her time to think.

  Chapter Twenty-three – Santorini, Greece

  There were three doors on the right side of the wide, marble hallway, and one open archway. Anna had no idea which one was the “right” that Ares had suggested would be a good place to change. For that matter, she wasn’t sure what the man considered a good place to change, either.

  The open archway was the first exit to the right. It led not to a bedroom, but an inner courtyard that was enclosed like a conservatory. In fact, that’s what it appeared to be. Anna stood at the entrance to it and tried to take it all in, but it was rather enormous. Oddly enough, it didn’t radiate trapped heat the way greenhouses normally did, yet everything planted inside seemed to be thriving. A walkway had been paved through the conservatory, laid with yellow bricks, of all things. And true to the movie they referenced, the bricks wound their way in a spiral toward the center of the room, until they disappeared behind plants Anna couldn’t see through.

  This isn’t it, she told herself firmly. She was going to get distracted, and now wasn’t the time.

  The second opening to the right was a door much further down the hall. It was a bathroom. Sure, it was large enough to play yard games in, but it was definitely a bathroom. A huge, marble, gold-gilt, spotless, crystal-chandelier-lit, hot tub imbued, twelve-person-shower having bathroom.

  For crying out loud, she thought. She was starting to feel scared again, and as Anna closed the door to the bathroom behind her and rapidly discarded what remained of her torn tee to replace it with the extra soft sweater that fit perfectly, she realized why she was feeling scared. While she’d been here in this villa, she’d slowly started to actually believe that the man out there was Antares Mace, her long-lost best friend. He behaved the same, sounded the same, smelled the same, felt the same. And in so far that she could see him through that damn spell Sterling had put on her, he even looked the same. He called her by the names Ares used for her. He hadn’t hurt her. He seemed to care about her comfort.

  She glanced down at the sweater, running her hands over it as she thought this.

  But then – there was this. She looked up at the bathroom with is palpable wealth. She thought of the conservatory and the fact that the ocean had been visible just beyond the glass. Whoever this man was, he had so much money he was outpacing Anna by the billions, and she wasn’t poor.

  But she had been. Once upon a time.

  And if that man out there was really Ares, then… the Ares she knew back then hadn’t been the man she thought she’d known at all.

  Because either her Ares wasn’t a dragon and wasn’t ancient and therefore hadn’t had ages to amass all this fortune because he was actually dead right now and the man in the villa
was an impostor. Or, her Ares had been a dragon all along, and when she’d been barely scraping by and killing herself to keep herself and her mother afloat, Ares had been wealthy beyond measure and had never offered to help her.

  Not that she would have accepted it if he had. But he could have at least tried, right? What did that say about him that he didn’t at least try? Was he not actually her friend? Did he not care as much as he claimed to?

  Maybe he knew you’d say no, she thought to herself. And then you would wonder where he suddenly got the money. You would ask questions – you know you would, Anna. And then the jig would be up.

  He would have had to come clean about being a dragon. Maybe that was what stopped him.

  Anna put her hands on the marble sink and closed her eyes, concentrating on breathing. Then she turned on the water, washed her face, and dried it on the softest pure white towel she had ever used. “What is this, baby angel wing or something?” she muttered. She wouldn’t have been surprised at this juncture.

  She sighed and studied her reflection in the gold-gilt mirror. It wasn’t reassuring.

  She made a frustrated sound and ran her hands through her hair to finger-comb it, then helped herself to some of the guest lotion, which of course came from a marble and gold container. It smelled wonderful. It smelled clean.

  “Like… White Rain,” she whispered, bewildered. It was so very long ago, and yet she felt transported back through time. Scents were some of the strongest memories in the human brain – and this one was strong enough to last a lifetime.

  Emotions stirred Anna’s insides. She stared at the marble dispenser as if it were a demon sent to torment her. Did it mean what she wanted to believe it meant? Did it mean that the man in the villa was Ares and that he’d missed her so much and known her so well, he’d reconstructed a scent decades gone so he could smell it whenever he wanted?

  Or was it a tactic of cunning deceit, artfully added to the subterfuge that was this enormously elaborate play to make her believe something false?