Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon

by Heather Killough-Walden

  And for another thing, the bullet wound in her leg would probably cause her to bleed to death before anything else.

  When Annaleia had joined the person she’d thought was Lily Kane and entered the beautiful white colonial-styled house, the very first thing her eyes settled on was not the simple gray concrete and empty room that greeted her, but the chair. It was a single hardwood armchair, straight-backed, sturdy and thick, and bolted down at the center of the otherwise empty room. Around each leg of the chair and over each arm were metal mesh-banded leather-lined cuffs with strong, metal locks.

  At once, Annaleia’s instincts kicked in.

  She turned toward the person or thing she now knew damn well was not Lily Kane, and as she did, she leaned into her right arm and imagined herself punching a hole through the wall behind the woman’s head. As a result, the punch landed full-force, and the woman’s head snapped back, lending Annaleia the precious time afforded by the element of surprise.

  She took that time to run right back out of the building in the hopes that she could pull up another portal, or at the very least – keep running out across the fields until she got somewhere.

  But the moment she made it through the door, the world changed. The fields of wildflowers and tall grasses that had been there before were gone. In their place was a plain, dimly-lit concrete hallway with no doors. Just a hallway.

  It was nothing more than a space to transform with illusory magic so it would appear to be much larger and much prettier.

  Annaleia tried magic too. As fast as she could, she spat out the words to a transport spell, but even as she was speaking them, she could tell they would fail. They felt different, hollow, devoid of power. When they did indeed fail, Anna tried to resurrect shields around herself. If she couldn’t escape, she could at least keep anyone from touching her. But the words to those spells felt exactly the same, as if they were only nonsensical phrases and not ancient terms that could be strung together to help her.

  And that’s when Annaleia remembered the gun. Cain’s gun.

  She wasn’t accustomed to carrying a weapon. She didn’t go into battles with the other wardens of her clan, so Conall hadn’t insisted she have a loaded weapon somewhere on her or nearby at all times. Instead, he’d made sure she knew the basics and then asked her to consider at least carrying it when she was called to revive someone.

  However.

  Back in the transport portal, something fortuitous had happened. When she and Ares were alone in the tunnel and Cain had shown up to give them their thought pearls – that’s what Anna was calling the matte black pearl-sized spheres Cain had handed out – he’d done something else too. There had been a few minutes when Ares had turned his back on her and Cain. During that time, Cain lifted the back of his shirt, drew a gun from its holster at the small of his back, and pulled Annaleia close so he could slip the gun into the inside pocket of her leather jacket.

  She’d stared up at him with wide eyes, completely taken aback.

  But then the clan leader had spoken in her mind, and for some reason it didn’t surprise the hell out of her to hear him there. Just in case, he told her, his mental voice reassuring. For Ares’ sake, keep it and be prepared to use it. And don’t worry; I’ll make sure he doesn’t find it on you before you need it.

  And he’d been right. Even when Ares had pulled her to him and she’d kissed him before she’d stepped out of the portal, he hadn’t noticed the gun in the jacket. There was no bulge, no extra weight. It was magic, of course. Cain’s magic.

  The moment she remembered she had it, Annaleia shoved her hand into her pocket and spun toward the open door leading to the concrete room, lifting her gun to level it on the woman she’d punched.

  The woman hadn’t done much since Anna had hit her. And in fact, she wasn’t bleeding at all, nor did she even appear to be injured. She had dropped all pretenses however, and no longer appeared to be the lovely golden-haired, golden-eyed Lily Kane. Rather, she had hair so dark it took on a hue much like blue-black hair, but emerald green. Her eyes matched, equally emerald. The effect should have been beautiful, all that stark color and darkness, but there was a contrasting lack of color in her skin that went beyond the pale. Pun intended.

  She looked like death.

  The woman simply stood beside the wooden chair, crossed her arms over her chest and said, “Give it up, Faith.” Her voice was a mix of fake calm and dripping acid. “You know you can’t cast any magic in here, and you’re thousands of miles from help.” As Annaleia tried to think of what the hell she wanted the woman to do, the woman stalked slowly toward her like a snake with legs. Anna’s hands flexed and unflexed around the gun as she watched her captor come, her movements sliding from step to step, slow, calculative, and slithery.

  “Get on the ground face down,” Anna told her. She knew she didn’t exactly sound convincing. But she hoped the gun would make up for it.

  The woman stopped and shrugged, like it was all a good game and Anna would get tired of aiming down the sights eventually. She gave Anna a smile that literally showed all of her teeth. “Besides,” she continued, ignoring Anna’s command. “Vic has placed something like twenty wards on this place, so not only are you not going anywhere, no one else is coming here. Well, no one you’ll be happy to see anyway. You can try to subdue me all you want, but it won’t get you anywhere.” She stopped and looked up as if sniffing the air. “And your new owner is on his way.”

  Annaleia was so focused on the woman’s words, she didn’t hear the movement behind her until thick arms wrapped around her to take hold of her wrists and twist. It would have forced her to release the gun if she hadn’t trained for just such a move and recovered from her surprise fast enough to use that training.

  She dropped her weight down and leaned forward as far as she could. In response, her captor had no choice but to move just a little bit forward over her bowed body. Instantly she rose back up, slamming the back of her skull into his face.

  But while she’d been doing this, her attacker’s companion – surprise attacker number two – had moved around her. At the same time that her skull broke her captor’s nose, her ribs took a hard steel-toe kick that knocked the wind from her body and the gun from her hand.

  The weapon hit the floor to go skidding into the concrete room several feet away, but she only half-noticed it. As she gasped for air and pain erupted like a bomb in her chest, the man who’d kicked her grabbed her by the hair at the back of her head and yanked her upright.

  She still couldn’t breathe and hence couldn’t think, but she guessed fifty years of martial arts classes now and then followed up by a few years of rather intense warden training was meant to kick in when you were least capable of thinking, because that’s what it did.

  She grabbed the man’s hand with both of hers and held it tight so he couldn’t pull away, and then she spun into him, bringing her leg up as if her knee were going to catch him in the mid-section. He raised his leg and simultaneously tried to sidestep this pretend attack, and she followed through with her real attack. His move had been reactionary, taking him off-balance, enough that all he needed was another nudge to go down. With his hand trapped under hers, she curled even further into him and then lunged to the side, forcing his hand to go far beyond his reach. He had no choice but to follow it – but Anna’s leg in front of his blocked his progress, and he went down. She was still holding his hand, which was by now attempting to yank her hair completely out of her scalp. But she followed him down hard and fast, making certain to put her entire falling weight in her elbow – which she aimed at his solar plexus.

  She made her mark, his body went utterly slack, and his grip released her hair.

  Unfortunately during this time, the woman who’d been masquerading as Lily Kane had grabbed Annaleia’s gun. When Anna stood back up again, it was to find the weapon pointed straight at her.

  She thought fast, or tried to, and instead took a gamble. “You aren’t going to shoot me. If I was wanted
dead or alive, I’d be dead already.” Then she turned and landed a spinning back kick to the already bloodied face of the man she’d head-butted earlier as he was again trying to come up behind her. Like an idiot.

  “Oh sweetie, I’m not gonna kill you,” the woman purr-hissed. That was what it sounded like to Anna. A hissing purr. “But I’d be more than happy to shoot you in the leg. Looks like they’re all muscle, so it’s sure to hurt a bundle. Or I could do the shoulder. Or both.” She arched a brow. “So how about it? You want some new flesh wounds to worry about?” Then she smiled again, and this smile was pure evil. “At least the scars will be a different shape than what you’re used to. Change things up a little, what do you say?”

  And by that time, mister hair-grabby guy was back on his booted feet and literally growling as he came for her. Anna’s eyes went wide as she had the wind knocked out of her yet again when the man lowered his head and rushed into her as if he were some sort of ‘roid raged linebacker and she’d just caught the football. His broad shoulder slammed into her abs, but rather than simply knock her down with the attack, he grabbed her legs at the same time and lifted her off the ground so she ended up thrown over his shoulder.

  Anna gritted her teeth against the pain and almost rolled her eyes. This was all going to hurt later – if she survived – but now her body was warming up, the adrenaline was well and flowing, and the pain was all blending together into something numb at the edges.

  And this move right here? Was one she’d practiced getting out of a hundred times.

  “Son of a bitch, put her down Leeso! Just tie her to the fucking chair!”

  Anna slid sideways as if she were a wide-necked sweater made of flesh that was slipping off his shoulder. He naturally went to adjust her, and she used his extra support in that position to jerk her knee up and slam it into the side of his head, catching his ear. The man roared in pain and dropped her.

  What a baby, she thought, a little surprised. But with a small smile, she also thought, That’s perfect. The bigger the baby, the harder it fell.

  As the bloodied face guy again came after her, Anna realized these two weren’t very smart. She could even hear the second attacker growling just like the first had. As she attempted to formulate a plan, she began to wonder what their deal was. They were big but inexperienced in fighting. They seemed to be all show. And now that she could see them both at the same time, she realized they were identical. Same close-cropped brown hair, same big brown eyes, same exact musculature and black clothing.

  Suddenly, they reminded Annaleia of the two Doberman pinchers that belonged to the character, Higgins, in that old eighties show, Magnum P.I.

  Oh my god, she thought as it hit her. That’s exactly what they are. They’re someone’s dogs.

  These two were someone’s pets! Maybe not dogs exactly, perhaps some other form of canine or fae beast, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that this wasn’t their normal form. She could see that now, in the slightly awkward way they moved and their lack of communication other than to growl. They were having to fight in a form that wasn’t theirs, like they were animals who had been transformed into humanoids solely for the sake of this circumstance – just to get Anna under control.

  Which meant that in a way, they were innocent.

  Crap, she thought next. That’s not perfect at all.

  It doesn’t fucking matter! her old brain yelled at her. You still do what you have to do, Anna!

  “Well, I don’t know what it was that finally settled you down bitch, but I’m glad for it.” A painfully tight grip on her arm spun her around hard – and the gun went off.

  Annaleia didn’t feel any flesh-ripping pain at first, only the bludgeoning impact of something hitting her leg very hard and very fast. She inhaled sharply in sheer surprise. And then the pain hit her. She cried out and began to drop to her knees, but before she could she had a hand in her hair again, pulling hard.

  She was dragged cruelly toward the center of the room and that ominous waiting chair. “That’s better; I, for one am bored with your antics,” the woman told her as if she were reprimanding her chauffeur or gardener.

  Annaleia’s world was tunneling.

  Somewhere on the outside of her shrinking field of pain, she felt herself thrown violently into the chair. She heard the sound of metal hitting concrete – the gun being set down so the woman could work with her hands.

  Anna’s wrists were secured first, and the woman wasn’t shy about strapping her in tight. The circulation to her fingers slowed, causing them to tingle. But when the woman went to strap in Anna’s legs, Annaleia heard a scream so loud it hurt her ears. She tried to wince away from it when she realized it was her own.

  “What… the… hell have you done?” came a new sound. A man’s voice, made soft by bewilderment.

  Annaleia knew that voice. She’d heard it once before, when Conall had brought her stalker before the powers that be.

  It was Randall Price. The serial killer.

  Annaleia tried to look at him, but sweat and tears made her vision hazy. He was indistinct, outlined by the frame of the room’s doorway. He was dressed in black. That was all she could tell other than that his shoes must have had leather soles, because she heard them clearly over her ragged, whisper-sobs and tiny whimpers of pain.

  Yep. Pain. Ooooh my god… there’s the pain. Holy shit this hurts. It turned out gunshot wounds hurt about as much as ghost scars.

  What she would have done in that moment for her magic “vitamin” pills. There’s something else I can do, she remembered. But what that was, she had no idea. Her thoughts were becoming as indistinct as Randall Price.

  “You… shot her,” Randall said once he’d come to stop a few feet away from Anna. Annaleia closed her eyes and dropped her head to her chest. It was too hard to try to make her eyes focus, and she was losing mental focus fast too.

  The pain must have been getting to her faster than it normally did because her inability to think straight at all was coming on her rather suddenly. There was something that she could do to help herself in this situation, she just knew there was, but she couldn’t for the life of her think of what that was.

  She honestly felt as if she had never been this muddled in her life. Was… this not supposed to happen anymore? Didn’t Cain do something to stop minds from muddling… or… or something? It’s the pain, she thought to herself. It has to be. But that was her only solid thought. Nausea roiled in Anna’s belly.

  She heard the woman’s voice, angry and defensive. “She’ll live, I promise. It’s only a flesh wound.”

  Silence in response.

  The woman continued, “You have to understand, she wouldn’t cooperate! You can see what she did to my dogs!”

  They were dogs. I was right.

  But when Randall’s footfalls resumed walking toward her, Anna’s thoughts became laser focused. Her head snapped back up. She still couldn’t see, so she blinked up at him through the blur and wet of pain that made her tremble.

  He closed the remaining distance between them, took a knee right in front of her, and peered steadily into her eyes. Anna blinked a few times, trying not to moan in misery. One of Price’s eyes was the green she remembered. But the other was white. And his glasses were gone. Oddly enough, it didn’t look bad, just unsettling.

  You’re losing it, her inner voice said.

  “My perfect angel,” Randall said softly, his words filled with genuine regret. “I’m so very sorry for what they’ve done to you. I’ll make it right, I promise. And then I’m going to take the pain away.” She didn’t bother flinching away when he gently cupped her cheek. She felt so weird…. “I’m going to take care of you,” he told her, brushing his thumb along her cheek bone.

  She heard something scrape lightly, metal against concrete. Randall lowered his hand and looked away but remained where he was kneeling before her. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he asked icily. “You were given strict orders not to harm her.” He p
aused, then almost in a whisper, he said, “You’ve taken a child’s marker to a masterpiece.” He met Anna’s eyes again, holding them with the sway of someone resolved. “Fortunately, marker can in fact be erased.”

  The woman started to say something, but stopped short.

  Then Randall Price stood and spun in one fluid motion, aiming and firing the gun at each of Annaleia’s three attackers in turn, emptying its chamber.

  Chapter Thirty-six – Portal, Decoy dimension, Austin Texas

  Victor could feel them coming.

  He hadn’t expected this. He had certainly expected them to refuse to negotiate, and he’d expected them to instead figure out a way to take Randall Price down. The man was killing women left and right, he was threatening one of their own, and surely he needed to be stopped. At least Victor had assumed they would see it that way.

  And if they failed to take Price down for whatever reason, then Victor had assumed his worst case scenario would be dealing with an irate “partner.” He figured when Price demanded Victor keep his end of the bargain and deliver the girl once and for all, Victor would simply shrug helplessly and say, “Well, I did try.”

  But he hadn’t expected this. Katrielle and her minions had turned the tables on him, completely ignoring Randall Price entirely in favor of coming after Victor instead.

  “Bravo, Kat,” he said softly as the essences of a hundred wardens closed in on him like an approaching tidal wave. He took a deep breath and considered his options. But when it came down to it, he only really had one.

  He knew any transport magic he cast at this point would be very rapidly traced, but it didn’t matter. He had a few seconds head start to do what he needed to do, and then he actually needed them to follow him.

  Victor transported from his warded location – right into the middle of the room where Annaleia Faith’s two friends remained tied to their respective chairs. They’d given up on trying to loosen their bonds, exhaustion most likely settling in.