“Do you have time to check it out or not?” snapped Declan.
“I can report in for both of us,” offered Connor in an undertone, shameless in his eavesdropping. “Gil will understand.”
“Yeah, we’re just finishing up here,” said Dolf to Declan. “But seriously, how many estranged cousins on the run from their dragon clans do you have?”
“Who knows?” said Declan expansively. “But since the last break in was a long lost relative that I didn’t want reported to the police, they’re a bit hesitant about this one.”
“What is your place? Grand Central Station?” demanded Connor, raising his voice slightly to be heard by the man on the other end of the phone line.
“Is that Connor?” demanded Declan.
“Yeah, we just finished up our assignment,” said Dolf. “And now we’re pulling into the parking lot at work. I’ll get your key off of Gil and go check it out.”
“Then I’ll call Gil right now,” said Declan. “Thanks again,” and then he hung up.
So Declan is coming home early, thought Dolf, as he put away his cell phone.
It couldn’t possibly be because Dolf had been having impure thoughts about Declan’s cousin. Declan couldn’t possibly know that. And even if he did, it wasn’t any of his business, anyway.
And it couldn’t have been a matter of cousinly affection. After all, cousinly affection hadn’t brought Declan home when Helena had first appeared.
No, it was probably a money thing. Declan had a cool head when it came to work, but he was naturally something of a risk taker – they all were. The difference between Declan and the rest of them, though, was that they didn’t have Declan’s crap luck in the casinos.
It probably helped that Dolf, at least, didn’t gamble at all. Those weren’t the sorts of risks that he liked to take.
Five minutes later, Dolf had Declan’s key and was on his way home again. The last terrifying intruder to break into Declan’s place had been Helena, so while Dolf was curious, he wasn’t expecting much. In fact, when he parked his car, Dolf was thinking about what sort of takeout he wanted to get after his physical rather than any of the dangers that might be lying in wait in Declan’s apartment.
His building’s elevators were apparently broken, so Dolf made his way down the hall and then up the set of stairs nearest to Declan’s apartment. In the hallway, Dolf caught his first whiff of hellhound; or rather, his first whiff of the hellhounds, plural. The entire hallway stank of them.
A pack, Dolf realized, a sudden jolt of adrenaline flooding his system. There was an entire pack here.
There was only one reason that they’d be headed that way – or rather, one person that they’d be headed in that direction for.
Fear swooped through his belly, sudden and unsettling – Dolf didn’t fear for clients – and Dolf broke into a run. He bolted down the hallway.
When he passed Declan’s apartment – its door hanging open, the door jamb splintered where the door had been forced open – Dolf sped up. He took the stairs at the end of the hall, the ones closest to his apartment, two and three steps at a time, leaping where he could down to the next landing. And with every breath, he pulled the scent of hellhound deeper into his lungs.
As he ran, Dolf sent a 911 text message to – someone. Someone that he’d called recently, so probably someone from work. He might need the help.
Dolf was nearly to his floor when a weird wind whipped up, filling the stairwell with its unearthly howl. On it rode the honk of geese, and knowing what it meant, Dolf found it in himself to bound even faster down the stairs. He rounded the corner to his own floor at a dead run, barely registering the large man – the hellhound – that stepped from somewhere to block his path, to prevent him from continuing down that hallway.
Without even slowing a step, Dolf body checked him, taking care while he did to ram his elbow into the place where it would most hurt.
Wheezing, the man fell back, and past him, Dolf saw the nearest elevator’s door slowly sliding shut.
He’d been meant to hold the elevator then, thought Dolf, his eyes narrowing at the sight of nearly a dozen hellhounds crowding his narrow hallway. It was too many for the narrow space.
But then, they had come expecting only to have to subdue Helena, not deal with someone like him.
And it was for Helena – as well, perhaps, to avoid dealing with anyone like him – that they had put the out of order signs on the elevators. It would have given then their pick of escape routes, after they had managed to overwhelm and subdue Helena. Because that was what they meant to do: abduct her, not kill her. And that, in turn, meant that they would have to be at least somewhat careful of her wellbeing while trying to subdue her.
And I can work with that, thought Dolf.
Dolf’s apartment was right there, the one on the corner, which allowed Dolf to fling himself bodily into the pack without losing a hair of his momentum.
It was a man that flew at the nearest human-shaped hellhound, and it was a man’s fist that hit his stunned face hard enough to knock him unconscious, but it was a dire wolf that landed in the midst of the transformed hellhounds.
Hellhounds, by their nature, were long and sleek with long, delicate legs meant for running, for chasing their quarry to the ends of the earth and beyond it. They were ethereal, the descendents of gods.
Dire wolves, by their very nature, were the opposite. They were massive with big heads, barrel chests, and strong legs. A dire wolf could easily weigh as much as a large man. And there was nothing unearthly about dire wolves, save their howls. Dire wolves had arisen in a time filled with sabertooth tigers, terror birds, short-faced bears, and giant ground sloths, and they had thrived. This was the sort of thing that Dolf was meant for, in either form.
And so it was without a qualm that Dolf threw himself into the fray. He closed his enormous jaws around the nearest dog’s leg, ignoring the other’s pathetic yelp as Dolf snapped his head to the side to break his leg and send the smaller, slighter canine flying into the nearest wall.
Dolf turned to deal with the next threat, the sheer force of him clearing a path through the hellhounds. He headed not for the place where the scent of seared ozone hung heaviest in the air, a sure sign of lightning – or an angry lightning dragoness’ presence – but rather for the pack’s alpha.
A wolf could understand a dog’s heart better than most, after all.
It was the alpha’s will that coordinated the attack. And, be they wolves or mundane dogs or even hellhounds, it was the alpha’s loss that would hurt them the most. It would break them, cause them to lose heart and run away. Dolf didn’t need to defeat them all. He just needed to defeat that one, crucial hellhound in the pack.
A cry, high and feminine – Helena’s – reverberated through the hallway.
Why doesn’t she transform? Dolf wondered, even as he shouldered a human-shaped hellhound aside, knocked the man hard into the hellhound next to him. They both fell over, positioning them just perfectly to have their throats torn out.
Dolf settled for flinging himself at the lead hellhound, the obvious alpha of this pack.
The fight was short, but vicious on both sides. Dolf was meant for this sort of fighting, built for it, and he had something – someone to protect – besides, but the hellhound had the weight of his pack behind him. He was fighting for his position. If he lost to Dolf, he would lose face in front of his subordinates.
They both had good reasons to try their hardest.
But in the end, it was Dolf who won, knocking his opponent onto his back and closing his jaws around the hellhound’s throat.
It wasn’t a wolf’s usual finishing move, but Dolf didn’t want to kill the other, just cut off his oxygen supply. With any luck, he would slightly suffocate the other. When the hellhound lost consciousness, he would let up.
A ripple went through the crowd, the hellhounds noting their leader’s loss. Happily, at nearly the same moment, there was a menacing crackle followed swiftl
y by the disgusting scent of burning hair.
And just as Dolf had predicted, it broke the pack’s will.
They retreated, some of them scooping up their fallen comrades on their way to the elevator. Two stayed just long enough to kick at Dolf. Dodging their blows meant abandoning his grip on his opponent’s throat, and that in turn allowed the alpha’s two loyal subordinates to grab the lead hellhound and whisk him away.
A minute or so after that, it was just Dolf and Helena, dire wolf and dragon, in the hallway. And she was looking at him as so many others had over the years, her eyes huge and her pretty face ghastly. The acrid scent of her fear filled his lungs, drowning out even the false, chemical scents of the soaps, shampoos, and lotions that she loved so well.
Unable to stand it, Dolf transformed back.
“Don’t,” he croaked. “Please don’t –”
There, Dolf cut off with a grunt, as Helena slammed into him. Her arms went around him, the soft scales that had appeared along the length of her bare arms scraping against his skin pleasantly, and she pressed the length of her small, firm body hard against his naked one. She was surprisingly cool in his arms, and her soft breasts pressed against his chest. Current, warm and low and tantalizing, flowed from her to him, making Dolf’s bare skin tingle pleasantly. Or maybe that was simply her proximity? Either way, it made him ache.
He’d been so scared for her!
His arms came up, around her, and Dolf held Helena just as tightly to him. One of his hands found its way into her hair, and, cupping the back of her head, Dolf tilted Helena’s face upwards. Her shining smile, brighter even than her hair, made Dolf’s heart clench.
“It’s you,” she breathed. “That giant wolf was you! You came! I can’t –”
There, he cut her off.
Leaning down, Dolf kissed Helena, pouring all his fear for her and desire and the lingering edge of his adrenaline into it.
For a moment, she was still, and it was like kissing a particularly warm statue. Then she kissed him back, and that was like having a live wire shove its tongue into his mouth.
It felt fantastic.
Moaning, Dolf melted against her.
His arms tightened around Helena, and he was just on the point of lifting Helena off of her feet and maybe pressing her against the nearest wall, when she abruptly ducked away from him, wailing, “Oh no! My chicken!”
Caught off guard – and left off balance – Dolf very nearly fell on his face.
Clumsiness must be catching, thought Dolf, disgruntled.
It was only then, as he watched Helena’s slight form disappear into the apartment, that Dolf heard the alarm going off. It was loud and shrill and sounded suspiciously like one of the fire alarms. More alarming still were the plumes of pale grey smoke that had started billowing out of his apartment.
Screwing up his courage – It couldn’t be that bad, could it? – Dolf dashed inside after her.
The good news was that the walls were not on fire. In fact, nothing was on fire save for the lump in the pan, which bore a stronger resemblance to charcoal than to any protein that a human might eat.
The bad news was that Helena was looking down at that pathetic little lump of charcoal like she might start crying over it at any moment.
“Helena,” began Dolf, uncertain what he wanted to say but certain that it should be comforting. He didn’t want her to cry.
“Don’t,” said Helena sharply, her tragic expression gone as if by magic. “Just don’t.”
“At least the soup didn’t burn?” offered Dolf, trying again. “It smells really good.”
And, as he had hoped, Helena brightened.
“That’s true,” she said more happily.
The possibility of her tears averted, Dolf obligingly withdrew. Instead of fussing over Helena, as he still secretly wanted to do – because Helena had almost been kidnapped. He had nearly come home to an empty apartment – Dolf jabbed at the wailing fire alarm with the rounded end of a broom handle, shutting it off before he called the police about the break in upstairs as well as the attempted abduction at his place.
Dispatch promised to send someone to check it out and take their statements, and then, annoyingly, insisted that he stay on the line in case anything else happened.
Dolf could understand their logic. It was what he would have done in the dispatcher’s place. But he still wished that they would let him go so that he could touch Helena, make sure that she was okay, and reassure himself that she was still there, where she ought to be.
Left to his own devices, he might even have kissed her again. She certainly hadn’t seemed to mind the first time.
Instead, he stayed on the line with the dispatcher, continually reporting their ongoing safety to her. Dolf had to content himself with touching Helena’s arm in passing, as she first went to open then front windows and then again as she went to set the table.
She was awfully calm for someone that had nearly been forcibly kidnapped. Only her scales and her hands betrayed her nerves, the latter sometimes shaking when she wasn’t actively using them.
Dolf got that too. He had that same unpleasant feeling quivering in his belly. He couldn’t help but to worry about what could have happened, maybe would have happened, if he had been even a few minutes later. If he had stayed to make his report to Gil, as he ought to have done, or one of the green lights on his drive home had been red instead, then she likely already have been gone when he got home. She’d been in her most portable form, after all.
And why didn’t she transform? Dolf wondered.
It wasn’t like she transformed into something small, peaceable, and leaf-eating. She transformed into a dragon. No way could anyone who was not a dragon easily have carried her off in that form.
And lots of dragons could fly. If Helena was one of the flying ones, she might have flown away from her attackers or done something equally dragonish.
But, if it weren’t for her scales, which she still had running the length of her arms and legs, Dolf would have thought that it hadn’t even crossed Helena’s mind to transform.
It was strange.
I’ll ask her about it later, thought Dolf, tensing at the sound of people clomping up the stairs.
The two people that appeared at the door were both in police uniforms. Frankly, it was a relief to see them. Dolf still checked out their identification though. In his line of work, it paid to be careful.
Things are finally getting on track, thought Dolf, relieved, as the officers separated them to take their statements.
So, of course, that was when someone screamed, their horror carrying up and down the length of the stairwell.
Perfect timing, Dolf decided wryly.
Chapter 13 – Helena
Truthfully, if she had been left to her own devices, Helena probably wouldn’t have gone to investigate the screaming. Aside from anything else, she had to pack. She needed to be out of town before those guys came back to try again. And she had to find a way to get out of town without using a rental car. Not for the first time, Helena wished that she could transform.
Would Rudolf mind if I stole his car? Helena wondered, sliding a sideways look at Rudolf as they trooped down the stairs. Just for a little while. I’d send it back. Eventually.
As if sensing her gaze on him, Rudolf stopped frowning at the backs of the policemen in front of them long enough to slide an enquiring look her way.
Helena shook her head mutely, Rudolf nodded, and then he reached out to wrap one of his big hands around her wrist. Under his touch, Helena shivered, as much at the feel of his impossibly hot flesh against her scales as his seemingly blasé acceptance of them.
Distracted, Helena tripped, and Rudolf caught her, his arm around her waist the only thing that kept for from falling on the cop in front of her and riding him like a toboggan to the bottom of the stairwell.
Rudolf hauled her against his side and, since she had just nearly fallen on her face, Helena allowed it. She leaned into his sid
e just to make him happy. It definitely wasn’t because he was big and strong and brave enough to fight a bunch of her grandfather’s goons to protect her.
They rounded a corner, clattering down the last flight of stairs to the ground floor, and Helena finally got to see what all the screaming had been about.
In a corner of the stairwell, a middle aged woman was talking frantically into her cell phone. And at the base of the stairs lay a crumpled figure; a familiar figure. The last time that Helena had seen him, he had been wishing her well with her dinner. His wife’s favorite book was sitting on Rudolf’s desk. She had meant to return it to him.
“Mr. Lazarus!” cried Helena, her voice a croak around the lump in her throat.
She tried to shove her way between the police men, but one grabbed at her and the other barred her way. Frustrated, Helena pushed harder, electricity arcing between her hands and their bodies.
Yelping, the cops feel away. And alone, Helena rushed forward to help her friend.
She reached out to turn her friend over – he couldn’t be comfortable, not with his neck at that angle – but an arm grabbed her around the waist, yanking her back. Frustrated, Helena lashed out again, and the man behind her grunted, his arm convulsing around her waist.
“Helena!” gasped Rudolf, his voice pained, and, chagrinned, Helena tried to control herself. It was difficult, but life as her grandparents’ granddaughter had prepared her for that sort of difficulty.
Instead, her two hands clutching Rudolf’s forearm, Helena watched as one of the policemen reached out to press his middle two fingers to Mr. Lazarus’ throat. The other one was talking into his radio.
“Well?” demanded Helena. “Aren’t you going to help him? Turn him over! His neck’s at a weird angle.”
“It’s fine,” said the officer curtly, as he stood. “He’s dead.”
“No! No, you’re wrong!” Frustrated, Helena shoved at Dolf’s arm, hard. “Rudolf! Go help poor Mr. Lazarus!”
“Officer,” said Dolf, his deep voice rumbling against her back. “Would you check again? Please? He and Helena were very good friends.”
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