Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon

by Heather Killough-Walden

  The first thing she’d wanted to do that morning of course was contact Annaleia and set something up, some sort of guided trial where she could attempt a spell or two. But Anna was unreachable in the dragon realm, so Piper had gone to Carmen instead. She’d hurried her friend into Carmen’s apartment bathroom, turned on the shower and the fan so her visiting family wouldn’t hear, and whispered, “Dude. I think I can do magic. Can you?”

  Carmen’s eyes had gone very wide and she’d nodded in emphatically. In a rush, her words falling over one another in rapid succession, Carmen told her, “I was baking casadielles instead of frying them for my nieces and nephews because they’re getting chubby, but it’s Christmas time and you know how I love to cook, so I was also making pestiños, I mean they’re a tradition, and I lost track of time so the casadielles burned and I was furious and suddenly I was swearing and wishing with all my might that the damn things weren’t burned – and suddenly….” Her voice finally trailed off as her eyes grew even wider. “They weren’t. They weren’t burned!” She shook her hands as if she couldn’t get enough air. “Piper, they were cooked perfectly!” She grasped Piper’s arms tightly. “Madre de Dios, I knew it was magic. I just knew it! That bruja made me into a witch like her!”

  From that point, it had simply been a matter of finding alone time to test Piper’s theory. What they’d come to realize was that whatever magic they had access to was residual, like left-over carpet remnants when someone had finished laying a fresh living room. Piper imagined that Anna had poured so much of herself into the act of resurrecting her friends, the two of them had a little extra mojo to work with right now.

  And that was awesome. What was not so awesome was that it was slowly running out.

  They had to be smart about how they used what they had left. Piper wanted to use it to track down the escaped serial killer and make sure he never hurt anyone ever again. Carmen was less willing to go this route. She was afraid for obvious reasons. And she had a big family to live for.

  Piper had no one but her friends. They were everything to her. The fact that the madman responsible for hurting them was free again and out in the world rather than dead was too big a pill for Piper to swallow.

  So the very first spell she cast after they’d figured out their magic was a spell she’d cast when she was alone. She’d escaped into her bathroom and turned on the taps and the fan, just to be on the safe side. And then she’d filled the sink up with water and begun chanting. She just said what came to her, what she felt was right – trusting her gut instincts. It was so easy; the words had just poured out of her, the magic in her causing the water to ripple with the force of it.

  What resulted was a sort of scrying spell, one she directed at something specific: She wanted to “see” what the next step was in successfully tracking down Randall Price.

  And the answers had played across its surface, giving her everything she needed to go on.

  Now here they were in a three-story building in the dark in a mostly abandoned part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during a time of heightened crime, riots, and basic unrest. And damn was it cold. New Year’s was in two days and the Midwest had hunkered down for its long-haul hibernation.

  Carmen had been the one to transport them. They’d wound up in a parked car across the street from the exact address they needed. Not bad for her first transport ever.

  Piper could sense that she had used far more of her residual magic than Carmen had up to this point, so she couldn’t help but wonder if that was the real reason she’d wanted Carmen to come with her. Was that selfish of her?

  Oh, who am I kidding? She asked herself now as she glanced back at Carmen in the darkness of the building’s second-story hallway. Carmen was there because the woman had come pounding on her door on a Tuesday night insisting that it was girl’s night – which it wasn’t – and they were going to watch rom-coms all night – which they never did because they all preferred sci-fi – and Piper caught on right away that Carmen was trying to tell her they were being watched.

  Piper had suspected as much anyway.

  As soon as they’d managed to get alone in the bathroom again with the water and fans on, something that was now simply customary for them, Carmen had opened a very old book to a transport spell page, pointed at it, and they’d nodded at each other in silence. It was now or never.

  “I don’t hear anything, do you?” Carmen asked very, very quietly.

  Piper shook her head, still straining to listen. It was strange, but she was almost sure she could feel the son-of-a-bitch here, but there was absolutely no sign of life in the building so far. There were no footprints in the dust, there was no fresh, dust-free broken glass to indicate a break-in, there were no body guards – or bodies in general. Did they have the right place?

  “No,” Piper told her. “Let’s go up another level.”

  But before Carmen could agree and they could begin heading up another level, someone shouted from the opposite end of the level behind them. “Get down!” Piper thought she might recognize the voice, but she had no time to ponder its owner before she and Carmen were hitting the deck – as the ceiling above their heads was violently ripped away from the rest of the building to reveal the cold winter night beyond.

  Chapter Fifty-seven – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  It was beginning to storm when Detective Hendrix James brought his car to a screeching halt and threw open the heavy metal door. It creaked, but stayed open despite the building rage of the wind that whipped at Hendrix’s trench coat and stung his eyes. This was not a normal building blizzard. Every molecule in his body could feel the magic underlying it.

  His gaze skirted across the street, where trash, branches and leaves skittered or were picked up and pulled into swirling updrafts high overhead. There was no sign of Sterling outside; James was the only one in the street. He looked at the building he knew Sterling had been referring to. It was obvious that this was the one, due in no small part to the eye of the amassing storm sitting like a vortex of evil directly above it.

  “I hate Tuesdays,” he muttered to himself before he pulled his weapon from its shoulder holster and held it pointed downward as he ran across the street.

  After he’d hung up with Sterling he’d made a few select calls, gotten the information he needed from a scryer who’d mailed the address to him in a text, and then he’d sent a message to Katrielle. Backup was on the way, but if that storm overhead was any indication, time was of the essence. He couldn’t afford to wait.

  Once he was across the street, he stopped beside the building’s front door and listened. He lifted his chin and inhaled slowly, concentrating on the surrounding scents. It was next to impossible to isolate any of them in this gale; he could only scent that there were humans nearby and that they were female.

  He allowed his vision to shift next. He knew his eyes were taking on a yellow glow when his vision sharpened, contrasts became clearer, and hot and cold differentiated themselves by color.

  And then the wind switched again and James caught the unmistakable scent of Time Enough perfume. His partner’s signature fragrance, accompanied this time by the scent of her shampoo and soap, and a hint of cinnamon toothpaste. She must have been coming straight after a shower.

  James swore under his breath and willed his eyes to shift back, returning to human sight a split second before he heard a car door slam shut down the street. He turned to see his partner running toward him from her pickup truck, which she’d parked right behind his. The wind caught at her hair and clothing, freeing long strands from her ponytail to send them whipping around her face.

  “Henry!” she whisper-called under her breath, trying to be loud enough over the building storm that he would hear her, but not so loud that anyone else would.

  He ran to meet her, his teeth clenched in anger he fiercely tamped down. “Tess, what the hell are you doing here?” He felt his eyes heating up and forcefully willed them to remain brown. This was not the time and place in wh
ich he wanted to reveal his true nature to her.

  But her expression was confused and even a little hurt, which threw James. “Henry, you jackass, tonight’s poker night! When you didn’t show, Madds and I got worried. She helped me track down your car.”

  Crap, he thought as he glanced back at his car, which had a tracking device on it like most cop cars did. She’s right. Sterling’s call had thrown him into trouble-shooting mode and he’d forgotten to call and cancel. “Tess, you need to leave,” he told his partner firmly. This was absolutely the last place he wanted her right now.

  But he didn’t know why he bothered; she was not the type of person to be derailed. She looked him up and down, noting the gun in his hand. Then she looked him in the eyes, and he knew she was reading him. She was human, so she couldn’t read him the way a vampire or incubus could. She simply knew people. And she knew him.

  “Detective James,” she said carefully, using a no-nonsense tone. “I need you to tell me what the hell is going on here.” She pulled her weapon as he had and pointed it down in the same practiced manner. “Right now.”

  “Damn it,” he hissed, his jaw clenched. He ran a hand through his hair, but it did no good. The wind shoved it right back into his face again. He glanced back at the building and the storm swirling directly above it. He saw her gaze follow his.

  “Holy Mother… what the hell is that?” she asked.

  He had just about decided to use one or more of his decidedly non-mortal abilities on her to get her to go home before it was too late when suddenly the roar of the wind was overshadowed by the long, terrible moaning of metal being stretched and rendered apart. His attention fixed on the building, his ears pricking and his eyes focusing. As he watched, the outer wall of the building began to tear apart horizontally, the edifice ripping itself in two right down the middle. Somewhere inside the building beyond that widening tear, a male voice shouted out a command to “get down.” This was followed by more ripping metal before there was a scream that was most likely one of Faith’s wayward friends.

  James had time to do only one thing. He spun, grabbed his partner by her arms, and yanked her into his body, bending himself over her to take them both to the ground as the top half of the building came away completely and architectural materials went flying everywhere. He felt his partner stiffen in fear beneath him, her heart hammering, her breaths fast and terrified. On the other side, debris battered his back, some pieces as large as basketballs. They would have killed him if he’d been human.

  He shut his eyes tight and whispered the words of a shielding spell as he waited out the shower of metal, concrete and glass. He’d no sooner whispered the final words than the mighty war-cry bellow of a dragon filled the night, so loud that it caused the ground beneath them to vibrate.

  Lightning speared into the ground somewhere nearby, riding the coattails of the roar, and thunder simultaneously slammed over them like a metal blanket of tangible sound. For a beat, James wondered whether he’d actually been hit with the bolt. But once he determined it was only close, he grabbed his partner’s chin and forced her to look into his eyes. He knew they were glowing, but it couldn’t be helped. He would have to hope she would think this was all a dream.

  He hesitated, his gaze getting lost in her wide, hazel-colored eyes. He’d never before been this close or held her this tightly in his arms. Here, her scent washed over him like a primal call. To make matters worse, it had been a while since he’d hunted. She was entirely too much of a distraction.

  When a second bolt of lightning hit close enough to raise the hairs on his arms, James claimed his partner’s lips with his own, sending werewolf magic coursing from his body into hers. Werewolves had always had this strange ability, the ability to render their victims unconscious with a kiss. He had no idea why and he’d never heard any feasible theories. He only knew it was something they wound up having to use quite often, as he did now.

  He felt his partner go limp beneath him, her breaths slowing, her heart rate quieting to something less frantic. She tasted wonderful…. A growl of frustration escaped him as he was forced to pull away. But again – this was something he could deal with later.

  The detective’s ears were ringing when he rose off his partner and bent to lift her into his arms. He strode quickly to her truck. She weighed next to nothing in his unnatural embrace, so he was able to open her door with a free hand. Once he had her settled onto the bench seat, he shut her door and then kept pushing until the metal was warped. It would not easily open again.

  He stepped back, vaulted over the truck to the other side, and did the same to the passenger-side door. Then he peered down at her through the window. His safety shield lay over her, and hopefully she wouldn’t think to kick out a window in order to run into the fray.

  James turned to the torn-apart building and looked up. Above the building, at the storm’s center, a massive shape was forming. Wings. A tail. A dragon’s maw. The smell of fresh-fallen rain permeated absolutely everything, pleasant but highly unnatural. Storms of this magnitude normally smelled like ozone and dust.

  Lightning struck, illuminating the beast within the gale’s eye. A storm dragon, James thought, bewildered. He had never seen one. They were supposed to be mythical.

  There was a flash, and James shifted into his wolf form. The mighty black wolf lunged across the street to disappear into the chaos of the building beneath the dragon’s fury.

  Chapter Fifty-eight – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  Sterling had made it to the second floor when he heard another man’s warning call out. “Get down!”

  Jarrod’s head whipped in the direction the voice was coming from. It was none other than Randall Price, looking disturbingly whole and healthy and obviously having been lurking in the shadows like the creep he was, just watching the two girls move through the building. But now the serial killer stepped out of the shadows to warn the girls, and Piper Maddox met his be-speckled gaze.

  Sterling’s lips pulled back in a sneer of disgust. “Mother fuck-”

  And then the top half of the building tore completely away from the bottom and Sterling found himself bolting toward the girls. One of the women screamed, but the sound was mostly ripped from her and sucked into the spinning void overhead. In the next hyper-instant, Sterling was diving for cover as debris began sailing in every direction like deadly poltergeist weapons.

  After a few breathless moments of very hard wishing, Sterling pushed himself to his feet, taking his chances with what was left of the airborne shrapnel. Carmen and Piper had hit the deck where he’d last seen them around fifty feet away. Sterling ducked beneath a swinging metal desk piece from the nineteen-fifties and dodged some kind of concrete and wood conglomerate before he was again running toward the pair.

  Half-way there, he skidded to a halt, his incubus eyes beginning to glow with furious magic.

  Randall Price had made it to them first. And now he stood staring coldly at Sterling while he held Piper Maddox in his arms and a knife to her throat.

  “Not another step, warlock! It would be a real shame to waste skin this fantastic twice!”

  Piper turned to glare at her captor. “Fuck you, asshole!” she hissed at him.

  But anything he might have said in return was swallowed up by an enraged roar from overhead. Sterling looked up, again shielding himself from flying debris, and watched as a darker shape first formed within and then separated from the core of the storm. Lightning illuminated it in all its glory, and thunder threatened to deafen everyone.

  A storm dragon, Sterling thought, wide-eyed. By the gods… that’s Annaleia.

  When he looked back down it was to find that both Piper and her captor had also looked up. Piper’s teeth were gritted, perhaps in anger, but most likely also in pain – Price’s knife had begun to slice into her skin, and a thin line of blood was trickling slowly down her neck from the blade.

  Sterling closed the distance before he fully realized what he’d done, and the next thing
he knew, Price’s face was making contact with his fist. Jarrod’s fingers wrapped around the hilt of the knife just as Price’s grip loosened on it and his body went flying.

  Halfway along his arcing trajectory, Price was struck again, this time with the hard end of a dragon’s wing. This second impact was accompanied by streaming electricity, a thunder blast, and was so strong, Randall Price disappeared from view altogether, sailing into the shadows.

  Now released, Piper swayed on her feet. Sterling spun to catch her, tossing the knife as he wrapped both arms around her and lowered her back down to the cement floor. Overhead, the dragon beat its mighty wings again then pulled both wings in to tuck them at its side as it dove toward the Earth like a tail-spinning jetliner.

  “Annaleia?” Carmen whispered. She’d risen to her hands and knees and was watching the storm dragon with one-step-from-crazy eyes.

  “It’s her. I know it is,” Piper whispered in response from where she lay in the cage of Sterling’s arms. Carmen began to get to her feet and Sterling felt time pressing in on him. He needed his magic.

  He loosened his grip on Piper and pulled away just enough that he could peer down into her eyes. “Piper, look at me.”

  Piper was clearly confused, overwhelmed, and in no state to question the command that came from a stranger and demanded a strange thing. She simply turned her head and met his gaze. Sterling held it hard and fast, utilizing the only magic he had left within himself – that of an incubus. “I’m going to kiss you, Piper. Do you mind?”

  She stared at him, her gaze shifting from one of his glowing eyes to the other. She shook her head.

  Relief flooded him. As much sway as he held over her right now, she would not have been able to give consent if she truly hadn’t wanted him to kiss her. He simply needed to bypass all the niceties at the moment. Of course, he could have just kissed her without asking for her consent. But incubi who did such things – and far worse – were the bane of the Nightmare reputation, especially when consent could be verified so easily even in the most dire situations.