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Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon

Page 26

by Heather Killough-Walden


  But when the widening circle revealed a field of tall grasses and wildflowers in the early morning sun, some of his concern abated. And then Lily Kane stepped around the portal and peeked in, giving them a wave.

  Behind her stood a colonial styled home atop a grassy hill in a real live prairie. The entire area felt very heavily warded. Now Ares knew they were where they were supposed to be. He nodded back at Kane in acknowledgement, but then he turned to face the woman behind him.

  “Leia,” he said earnestly, “you wanted to ask me, I know you did. But you had so many questions, and I was asking my own, so there was no time.” He swallowed hard; his throat felt so damn tight. “So I’m just going to tell you now.” In case everything goes to hell and I never get another chance.

  Annaleia stared up at him, wide-eyed. “Ares, what – ”

  But he placed his fingers to her lips to silence her.

  “Fifty years ago, when I first met you, I swear to every god in existence that I was positive I was falling in love at first sight. It made no sense, not for me, not for a black dragon. But that’s how it felt, damn it. And even so, I still didn’t tell you I was a dragon because, well, I’m a dragon, Leia. I obviously can’t go around just telling people. You know?”

  She nodded dutifully, her eyes lavender saucers in her flushed, fantasy-worthy face.

  “But then I got to know you. And Christ, the more I got to know you, the more I realized that my first thought about you was right all along. I had fallen in love with you at first sight. It was fucking impossible and I’d still done it. I just hadn’t known why.” He cupped her cheek with a warm palm, and slid his other arm around her waist, drawing her against his chest. Anna’s breath left her in a whoosh, but she steadied herself with her palms against the front of his leather jacket, and for some crazy reason he swore he’d never let another woman touch that jacket so long as he lived. It was hers now and hers alone. Just like everything about him was.

  He kept going, needing to say it all. “And by that time? By the time I realized you were the one? I couldn’t tell you I was a dragon because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you.”

  He just had out with it. All at once. The thing he should have told her a long time ago.

  He shook his head, and closed his eyes, pushing a hand through her shining gold-touched hair to pull her head against his chest. She went willingly, but he felt her stiffen uncertainly against him. She was worried about him, about his behavior – because it wasn’t like him.

  The fact that she worried made him crazy love her even more. He bent over her close and whispered in her ear. “I’m the meanest dragon in the world, Raindrop… and I’m a fucking coward.”

  All true. All she had to do to verify it was ask the guys. But he hoped she never would.

  “When the chips are down,” he told her, “I would rather stop existing once and for all than face the prospect of existing another single fucking moment without you.”

  Not another breath, he thought. I don’t want another goddamn breath unless she’s there in my world to share the air with me.

  Annaleia slowly slid her arms around Ares’ waist, and he could feel her trembling beneath her grip. He listened closely and caught the sound of her heart fluttering, her breathing uneven with emotion.

  “Tell me you forgive me, Leia. Tell me you can live with that side of me and absolve me.” His voice dropped into a low and dangerous note, barely a whisper above a growl. “Or I don’t know what the hell I might do.”

  Annaleia went very still in his arms. Ares followed suit – and held his breath.

  And then Annaleia laughed. It was very soft at first, and he almost mistook it for sobbing. But when her shoulders shook and the small chuckle grew into something like a genuine belly laugh, he gently pulled away and looked down at her, wondering if Victor Maze had somehow made it back into her head after all.

  “Leia – ”

  “Ares, shut up,” she said with a smile, holding up her hand to silence him. “Just shut up for a second and listen to me.” Then she lowered her hand and took both of his in hers, staring up into his eyes. “People are made up of their pasts. That’s all we are, right? When you think about it, everything that makes us who and what we are is what we remember. That’s it. So there’s a lot packed into that. Some of it is good and some is not so good, and if we’re lucky then some of it might make us proud, but most of it will usually just embarrass the hell out of us or make us wish we could wipe it away.” She was still smiling when she shook her head. “That’s life, Ares. It’s baggage.” A soft chuckle. “Baggage is life.”

  He gazed down at her, the whole of him utterly mystified. For the umpteenth time since he’d met her, Annaleia Faith’s words wove a tapestry of common sense across his consciousness that felt more like a sage story than the clear and simple truth it always actually was.

  “And… if we’re one of the truly fortunate ones, then at some point in our lives, we manage to meet someone who is willing to do the one very special, very crucial thing for us that seals the deal… and makes them our soul mate. And it’s not what you think. It isn’t magic. It isn’t fate.”

  There went his breath again as he waited.

  Her voice was so soft as she said, “Our soul mate is none other than the one person who’s willing to carry our baggage for us, for just a little while. And give us a much needed break.” Her crooked smile was tender, but it beamed. “That’s all, Ares. And that’s everything.”

  Ares blinked, feeling slightly stunned and even a little dizzy.

  Annaleia raised her arms and cupped his face with her hands. “I accept you and all of your baggage because that’s what makes you the man – and the dragon – that you are, Antares Mace.” She stood on her tip-toes then, and he automatically bent to meet her half way, because he would have done anything to meet her half way in a kiss.

  Her lips on his were the softest blessing, warm and dry and full of promise. She kissed him like a butterfly’s embrace, and he let her pull away.

  She whispered, “But just so you know mister bad-ass dragon, my baggage officially comes with loads of candy, so I’ll expect you to have some stashed in your pockets for me at all times from now on. Capiche?”

  Fuck, yes, he thought. “Deal,” he said, simply. He meant it down to his dragon’s core.

  His mind yearned for her company, her words, her intelligence and wisdom. His body ached for every-fucking-thing else. But right now he had to go beat the crap out of a chaos god – or anyone and everything who might get between them. Either would do at the moment.

  So he turned to the portal exit and yelled, “Not a scratch on her, Kane, or I’ll send your husband home to you with a nasty case of road rash,” he promised, “and one arm.”

  Lily Kane’s eyes widened. Most likely because she realized he wasn’t even slightly joking. But of course Annaleia assumed he was, so she gave a soft laugh and shook her head. God help him if she ever really chose to find out just how much of a monster he could be.

  With a small amount of hesitance but mostly with resolution, the lovely seer-werewolf Lily Kane nodded. Annaleia met her at the exit, they clasped hands, and Lily helped her jump from the portal to land on sure footing. She turned back to the portal opening.

  “I’ll be back for you soon,” he told her firmly, locking the promise in with his eyes.

  She looked up at him and gave him a nod. “Be careful.”

  He showed her a reassuring smile. But as Antares turned from the exit and it closed behind him, “careful” was quite literally the very last thing he planned to be – with anything or anyone – for at least the next few hours.

  Chapter Thirty-four – Portal, then Austin Texas

  Ares did the same thing now that Annaleia had done minutes earlier, and paced like a caged lion between the boundaries of the transportation portal. He was agitated. There was something uncomfortable buzzing just beneath his skin. He couldn’t touch it, couldn’t even exactly locate it, but
it made him feel anxious, like a panic was rising and he really needed a Xanax or ten or a beer or fifty.

  It was to be expected, probably. He was about to face off with a literal god who wanted to destroy the woman he loved. In the end, someone was going to die or get hurt. That was probably worth a little panic. Right?

  You’ve been through shit before, Ares, he told himself. This was no different.

  Except that it was.

  The portal re-opened on an early December morning on Sixth Street. The sun had just come up, the streets were wet and sticky with spilled margarita and colada, and the tourist venue was more or less deserted. What homeless hadn’t managed to find space in a shelter were either standing around burning fire bins in back alleys, or they were under old sleeping bags and tarps and newspapers, and they were long dead.

  Ares let the portal close behind him and raised his chin, slowly breathing in. He took in the scents carefully, trying to separate them not unlike a werewolf would do. Then he listened. He was far better at that.

  He knew where his clan was. Their voices, their heartbeats he would know anywhere. And of course there was that heavy spot among them that felt so massive with magic, it was a black hole amidst twelve neutron stars. Or at the moment, eleven.

  Ares walked fast, his eyes scanning the area carefully as he made his way to his clan’s location. When he spotted the motorcycles, some different from the night before, he realized that his clansmen had met in an above-ground parking garage that was actually highly warded territory in Texas that had automatically been allotted to the Monsters clan. There were plots of land or property like this in every city and in most countries. Ares and his brothers-in-arms were the only warden clan that moved from place to place; the others were stationary. In exchange for the help Cain and his men lent on tougher jobs, the Monsters were gifted large pieces of land such as everything from parks, storage facilities, garages, motor parks, cafes or restaurants, and even abandoned skyscrapers.

  When Ares entered the Monsters property, which was two streets off Sixth and hidden by various illusions so it appeared to be nothing more than well-maintained parking – which Cain made sure to leave open to the public because, as he put it, parking was a bitch – he found the others grouped together on an extra level of the garage, one humans wouldn’t be able to get to and wouldn’t even know was there. As was expected, the Monsters were not alone.

  As good as sixty other men were massed as closely together as possible in the concrete haven. He recognized most of them as detectors, wardens whose main job it was to trace the source of a spell, usually a transport. Many of the wardens were Texas’s Rigel clan – and one of the people there was a werewolf detective, rather renowned because he worked personally for Lady Katrielle.

  Cain was at the center of them all, but he looked up when Ares approached. “We think we have a lead,” he told him. The clan leader turned and nodded at Detective James.

  James said, “I was able to put a few things together from Randall Price’s crime scenes and the meeting I had with him and Victor Maze.” He held up his phone, tapped a few things on it, and said, “If my reasoning is anywhere near right, Maze and Price are probably hiding the girls close by. It’s Price’s MO to keep his victims close to where he picks them up, and I have a feeling he’ll want to do the same with these two for several reasons. One, it makes it easier for Faith to find him, and that’s the whole point of this situation. Two, even if it’s unconscious, he’ll want to plan a second option if things don’t pan out with Faith. In which case, he’ll want to follow the same rules he’s followed so far and use one of these girls in her place.” He shrugged. “It’s kind of a classic serial killer mentality thing.”

  He showed Ares the phone screen as Ares joined him. “Right about here.”

  The location he was indicating was in a residence, most likely a house, on 7th street, somewhere east of I-35. It was a few blocks away as the crow flies, and seconds away as Monsters do.

  “Gutsy,” said someone in the crowd. “Staying so close to where he picked them up.”

  “Just crazy,” someone else said. “He did mutilate several women.”

  There was a general consensus, subdued and quietly angry, but Ares didn’t join in. He was still not feeling quite right. He wanted to rip his own skin off.

  Cain nodded and took a deep breath. “Thank you Detective.”

  Hendrix James put away his phone and stepped back, allowing Cain the floor once more. “In the meantime, the detectors are ready to do their thing at ten a.m. on the mark” he addressed the large group, his voice magically amplified for the humans among them. “We’ll need to move out the second they’ve narrowed it down to a general vicinity. We can’t afford to waste time, guys. Everyone clear?”

  There were affirmatives all around.

  Cain turned to Ares then and put a hand on his back. “A word, Mace,” he said, gesturing to an empty spot in the garage where they could talk.

  When they were more or less alone, Cain looked Ares in the eyes and asked, “What’s going on? What is it you’re sensing?”

  Sensing? Ares wondered. “I’m not –”

  “Yeah. You are.” Cain’s gaze narrowed. “Did everything go smoothly with Faith?”

  Ares cocked his head to the side, narrowing his gaze. “Yeah – Kane was there, the house was in the middle of nowhere, and the area was heavily warded.”

  Cain gave a small nod, but his blue eyes hardened as he turned and began to step away.

  A large digital clock on the garage wall beside the nearby exit sign switched from 9:59 to 10:00.

  Cain stopped – and Ares experienced an unpleasant sinking feeling. When Cain turned back around and Ares saw the look on his face, the sinking feeling turned to something colder and heavier. And suddenly he knew what was bothering him.

  “What was it?” Cain asked point blank.

  “It was Lily Kane,” Ares told him numbly, “she didn’t have a comeback.” He’d glibly threatened Daniel Kane, who was actually a good friend of Ares’ because they were both long-time riders. It wasn’t that Ares wouldn’t hurt the werewolf chief of police – or get hurt himself trying – if Daniel had promised to take care of Annaleia and failed. The thing was, Daniel Kane would have healed in minutes if not seconds, and even if Ares had managed to rip off an arm, it would’ve grown back nearly as quickly.

  What’s more, before any of that would have happened, Lily Kane would have cut Ares down with words sharp as scythes as she returned Ares’ warning with some kind of witty retort that made him look and feel about ten inches tall. That was her way.

  The fear she’d shown him instead? That was not her way.

  Cain was probably reading his thoughts because he softly asked, “Exactly how warded did it feel, Mace?”

  Ares didn’t answer. The truth was, the shields over the location were so thick, Ares hadn’t been able to penetrate them at casual perusal. He could have tried harder and pushed with all his might, but he hadn’t felt the need to. He’d subconsciously assumed it was extra protection meant to keep Annaleia safe.

  That agitated feeling he’d had earlier was hardening into something new now. Like dead certain dread.

  Cain drew closer. In a quiet voice that meant all the bad things he could imagine were coming true, the warden leader asked, “Mace, did you walk her into the house?”

  Several Monsters members who’d been within earshot nearby now drew closer. Ares could feel them there – Nathan, Crow, and the Gemini twins Rafael and Dante. He knew they were flanking him, supportively drawing in around their clansman like they always did. But he noticed them on a kind of blurred periphery, the type you saw the whole world through when your vision was tunneling because every ounce of your focus was now on the single most important thing in existence.

  Behind Cain, in the throng of detectors and wardens, someone eagerly called out, “We’ve got a location on Maze’s magic source!”

  But Ares barely heard him. He was alread
y spinning around and simultaneously calling up a portal to somewhere else entirely.

  “We’re going with you,” said Nate beside him.

  Ares didn’t respond. He couldn’t. His heart was in his throat blocking his airway.

  The portal swirled to life and Ares rushed into it, four of his leather-clad brethren right behind him.

  Chapter Thirty-five – Undisclosed Location, warded “safehouse”

  Annaleia tried to make her mind work, tried to formulate a plan. But she was in a pickle. The metal-reinforced leather cuffs around her wrists and ankles prevented even a millimeter of progress when she yanked or thrashed against them. She wasn’t going anywhere that way.

  And her mind didn’t seem to want to work. Maybe because she was injured.

  Her captors had gotten in a few pretty good shots, and her body was blossoming with bruises. Her bottom lip throbbed where it was busted open. She was sure it was very pretty.

  Her cheekbone felt heavy in her face where she’d been back-handed, and she could just imagine that was becoming attractive too. Nothing like black and blue blush to raise people’s suspicions about what you did in your off hours.

  But those were mere distractions, superficial comparatively speaking. The pain was worse in her hands and knees, all across her shins, and up and down her arms. These were the locations on her body she’d used in her attacks, and all places she’d likewise been struck. That kind of pain alone could wear a person down after a while and slow down their attacks because the prospect of being hit in the same place even one more time is so unpleasant, the body unconsciously pulls its punches.

  Not that she’d be attacking anyone else again for a while. Maybe not ever.

  Still, it wasn’t that bruising that had Anna concerned either.

  For one thing, her ribs hurt worse. One strike had been with the toe of a really hard boot, and another had been in the exact same place but she’d been struck with a man’s shoulder in a kind of tackle. Now each time she commanded her body to draw in air, it felt as if her lungs didn’t quite want to obey; they did so begrudgingly. It hurt to breathe. She wondered if any ribs were cracked.

 

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