by C. I. Black
“Well, if we’re going to be here now, I’m going to get some supplies.” Raven drew in a quick breath and squared her shoulders. Back to business, even if Nero could still see concern in her eyes. “Do you think you can hold down the fort long enough for me to get a few things from the house?”
She took a self-adhesive bandage, a package of disinfectant wipes, and a suture kit from the cabinet in the hall, shoved them into Nero’s hands, then headed to the kitchenette /communal living room — much like the set-up the Clean Team had — and the long underground passage back to the house.
Diablo leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “So what the hell? You show up with all this emotional energy, and Anaea nearly takes out the living room with half the kids in it. They’re pissed they’re going to have to watch the last ten minutes of the game on playback.”
“It couldn’t be helped.” This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have with Diablo. He’d known bringing Becca here could affect Anaea, with her unstable sorcerer’s ability, but he hadn’t had any choice. He pulled the lounge chair to the side of Becca’s bed and set the medical supplies on the nightstand. Hopefully the bandage would be enough, because he had almost no experience suturing flesh — and he wasn’t going to think about her broken ribs or collarbone until she was awake and Raven was around to help.
“What about the baby silver drake?” Meaning Gig.
“That facility implanted a GPS tracker on her and had men after her that were too well-trained for some hospital. And no—”
Diablo opened his mouth to say something.
“It wasn’t a prison, unless there’s a special operations black site in the middle of Newgate with a gatelock on it.” Nero pushed the sleeve of Becca’s hospital gown back and dabbed at the knife wound with a wipe. It didn’t look deep and was already starting to scab over.
“A gatelock?” Diablo’s tone turned dark.
“Yeah.” The implications weren’t good.
“Grey just dealt with a drake with more sorcerer ability than first believed. Could it be something he’d done?”
“Doubt it.” From what Nero had learned of the facility, it hadn’t felt like Servius’s style, which meant there was another drake out there strong enough to create a gatelock… unless the lock was the Handmaiden’s handiwork, but that didn’t fit with what he knew about the Handmaiden.
“And her?”
Nero’s gaze slid to Becca. Her matted black hair covered most of the pillow, and her features were too delicate from hunger and too pale. It was astounding she’d managed to fight the sedative the doctor in the facility had given her, as well as the dose from Raven, with so little body weight.
Of course, maybe that had something to do with enhanced soul magic. It wasn’t common in human mages, but during the hundreds of years he’d had his puzur, he’d encountered a few with strong enough souls that they could heal wounds faster and, as a result, metabolize drugs faster.
He applied the bandage. That healing was nothing compared to a drake’s, but it did extend their lives. Maybe he’d have a century with her before her too-short human life ended.
A vise seized his chest at that thought. Mage or no, exceptional soul magic or no, she was still human. She wasn’t a sorcerer like Anaea and hadn’t been reborn like Ryan. In a blink of Nero’s dragon eye, Becca would be dead and he’d have lost a second inamorata.
Mother of All. One problem at a time. He wrenched his emotions into a mental box. There were other, more dire problems that needed to be dealt with first. How he felt was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He might be unable to kill Becca as common sense demanded, but he still needed to protect his puzur.
“I need you to take a team to both the primary and secondary safe houses and clean them out.”
Diablo rolled his eyes. “You burned both locations.”
“I did.” Nero let a growl escape. It had been a long, painful twenty-four hours, and if he couldn’t convince Becca this wasn’t a nightmare, it was going to get longer. “Deal with it.”
Diablo’s eyes narrowed and the muscles in his jaw twitched, as if he wanted to fight Nero but had somehow found his restraint. “What about the facility with the gatelock?”
“The safe houses are the priority.”
“I’d say another dragon with sorcerer ability who’s implanting chips into human mages is a problem. Even if it isn’t somehow connected to Zenobia’s failed coup, it means there are drakes still active and flying under our radar. That’s dangerous.”
“And if they can tie a safe house to us, that’s even more dangerous.” Nero glared at Diablo. “Go.” Or I’ll make you.
Diablo huffed. “Fine.”
He stepped toward the door but disappeared with a whoosh of air as one of his unique rapid free gates enveloped him.
Nero sagged back into the chair. He should get up, get clean, get back to work. There wasn’t time for… this. There would never be time for this. His love, his true love — he couldn’t even pronounce her name with his human vessel — was dead. Fate couldn’t just replace her. Dragons communicated in roars and growls and clicks with complex body language and a psychic connection similar to a mix of telepathy and empathy. When a dragon was inamorated, that psychic connection grew deeper, wider, stronger. How could he have anything like that with a human? But that wasn’t the problem. His psychic connection with Becca was stronger than anything he’d had in his dragon form, even with his true love. He’d never seen through his love’s eyes or experienced her pain.
Of course, maybe he was wrong.
Maybe he wasn’t inamorated, and it was his broken dugga’s magic making him feel like he was.
That had to be it.
A gust of wind swept down the hall, and a feminine voice said something too quiet for Nero to make out. Diablo must have gated to the kitchen in the main house first and helped Raven return with the supplies, since she couldn’t free gate. Hopefully the younger black drake would then do what Nero had asked and deal with the safe houses and not turn the order into a fight.
Actually, it was kind of surprising how little a fight the whole request had been. In the past few weeks, Diablo had fought him on everything, as if he wanted to be put in his place. The fact that Diablo hadn’t demanded Nero kill Becca — or tried again while Nero was down — was a stark change in character.
Raven eased into the doorway. “You can go get cleaned up now.”
“Yes.” He should. But he couldn’t make himself get up and leave Becca. He had to be near her, bathe in her aura, touch her, kiss her, solidify the bond between their souls.
“I can handle her if she wakes and becomes violent again,” Raven said.
He had no doubt his Third could.
He flexed his fingers, but still couldn’t turn the thought of leaving into action. Solidify the bond. Except that wouldn’t work, because there was no bond. He was not inamorated.
“I won’t handcuff her this time. I promise.” Raven’s expression remained worried.
“I believe you.” Come on. Get up. Jeez. It shouldn’t be difficult.
She pursed her lips.
His gaze slid back to Becca. Stand up. Come on. Leave her.
Raven shifted in the doorway. Nero tugged his attention back to her. If he couldn’t pull himself together, he’d be the danger to his puzur that he feared. Hell, he already was the danger he feared and couldn’t seem to concentrate long enough to figure out what to do about it.
“How did the Council meeting go?”
“Worrisome.” Which was an understatement. And something else he needed to have a plan for. He had to get Regis to rescind his order for all drakes to return to Court or he’d lose Raven’s help with his kids here in the human realm. And just adding her to the Asar Nergal when she hadn’t publicly announced her combat abilities would draw suspicion from Regis and Tobias and anyone else who suspected Nero was the dugga.
“Mother of All,” he growled, and used his frustration to force himself to his
feet. “I’m getting cleaned up.”
“I’ll call you if anything changes.”
He opened his mouth to summon a gate but couldn’t say his power word, could barely think it.
God damn it. It looked like he was washing up here.
13
Diablo paced the kitchenette, his insides writhing. His beast, curled tight within him, raged at the danger that woman, Rebecca, presented, and the emotional and physical agony radiating off Nero. It hadn’t just been Anaea whose empathy had been slammed the moment Nero had gated into the transition suites, and now Diablo’s beast wanted a fight.
Mother, he needed to hit something, break something, release the pressure. But if the dragon who ran wherever Rebecca had been kept knew about the safe houses, they had to be dealt with immediately. It wouldn’t stop the inevitable discovery of their puzur — something Diablo was certain was one of the many worries clinging to Nero’s emotions lately — but it could put it off until they had a plan.
And he had to trust that Nero could come up with a plan, because right now the only plan Diablo could think of was the one his beast wanted. Fight and kill them all. It didn’t matter the them was his own kind or that dragons, even in their spirit state, were an endangered species.
Raven stepped out of the room Rebecca was in and headed into the room with the other intake, but stopped, her gaze jumping to him. Her eyes narrowed, the line of her jaw hardened, and his beast readied in expectation of the impending fight.
Not fucking now. And not with my sister. He mentally shoved at it but knew there wasn’t really a way to control it. Not since his best friend’s murder. Not until he managed to steady the emotions from him and everyone else churning within him, and that, without Andy’s stalwart confidence in Diablo, might never happen again.
He bit back a growl as Raven stormed toward him, half in part because she was marching and the other half because there were blood and holes in her form-fitting sweater — and even though she could heal almost as fast as he could, it still should have been him getting shot because of Nero’s mess.
“You don’t have to hang around.” She shouldered past him and opened the fridge, as if trying to disguise confronting him with getting something to drink. “I’ve got this.”
“I know you do,” he said. She was just as capable as him, even if she was now the younger sibling by a good couple hundred years. And while her emotions revealed she still didn’t fully trust her earth magic in a fight, that would disappear with a bit of time and experience.
“So?” She took a single serving bottle of orange juice from the fridge and shut the door. “What is wrong with the both of you?”
“You know what’s wrong with me.” He forced a wry smile, unable to fully commit to the lie. She only knew half of what was wrong with him — how powerful his beast was — and only knew of a fraction of the power of his empathic earth magic. That wasn’t her burden to carry.
“I said I could handle them and I will. But Nero is cleaning up in the bathroom off her bedroom and you’re still here.”
“I’m waiting on Asma to call me back and giving Terry time to pick up supplies before heading to the safe houses.”
“And you just decided to wait here?” Her tone was clear. She didn’t believe him.
“Well, what if I was hanging around to watch your back?”
She sliced a thread of wind across his cheek with a stinging snap. “Well, stop.”
Blood had oozed to his chin before the cut sealed shut, and his beast howled to be released.
“If that woman wakes and sees you, you might have to kill her. No matter what Nero wants.” Her expression darkened. Raven had seen the horrifying reality of what Zenobia’s dragons had done to those humans they’d kidnapped, and there was a chance she had two of them on her hands now, although the last time they’d talked she’d been pretty sure the young man who remained unconscious was a natural human mage. And while she hadn’t been the one to kill any of those too soul sick to save, she knew what had happened to them and knew that was a possible outcome for their new intake if he wasn’t a natural human mage, and definitely the outcome for Rebecca if Raven couldn’t pull off a miracle.
Except the emotions blasting from Nero to protect the woman were so strong even Diablo’s beast had hesitated. It was the only reason Nero’s wind had managed to deflect Diablo’s knife strike to Rebecca’s heart. The emotions weren’t even weak or concealed. They were certain and horrified, and Diablo feared them as much as Nero did. His doyen was inamorated, shockingly, suddenly, in the blink of an eye, and if they couldn’t save this human, he’d lose his mind, as well.
“You have to save this one.” As much as Diablo’s beast yearned to challenge Nero, the puzur, the Asar Nergal, and the Major Black Coterie needed its leader — and Diablo could never hope to replace Nero as doyen. He didn’t want to, either, no matter what kind of fight the beast craved.
“I don’t know if I can. I haven’t been able to save any of the others, and those have been the ones you’ve convinced to meet with me.” Raven glanced down the hall to the two open doors, where Rebecca and the new intake lay. “She doesn’t want to be here, and I’m not sure she wants to believe this or believe what happened to her was real.”
The memory of the woman’s terror and ferocious determination made him shudder. He wasn’t sure he’d want to believe those feelings were real, either. “Doesn’t matter. We save her.”
“And by we, you mean me.”
“You’re the one with the gift.” Perhaps not a proper magical gift for helping those humans with earth magic — he really didn’t know — but still something with a hint of power. Maybe because they were siblings, they both had empathy, but that wasn’t how earth magic worked. Earth magic came from the human vessel. Before the Great Scourge, dragons had a magical essence in the core of their soul that helped them communicate and, in the end, helped power the spell their Goddess had sacrificed herself to create to save them. But earth magic — controlling water, creating gates, manipulating the earth, summoning wind — that was a dormant ability within humans activated by the dragons’ more powerful souls.
His phone chimed. Someone had texted him.
“Asma or Terry?” Raven asked.
Eva. His new neighbor and… girlfriend? They’d already had coffee together earlier that night and while there was attraction in her emotions — blazingly hot attraction when she thought he wasn’t looking at her — there was also hesitation, which was completely understandable since they’d only met about a week ago. The attraction, however, was starting to burn away the hesitation, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d give in to temptation and see what other sultry emotions he could inspire within her.
But before he did that, he needed to get his God damned beast under control. If he didn’t, he risked terrifying her, or worse, hurting her.
“Oh ho! Not Asma or Terry.”
Crap. He’d stared at the phone for too long and hadn’t answered.
“The new girlfriend, I see,” Raven said.
“She’s a human. It’s a fling.” It couldn’t be anything but a fling, given how short a human’s life was.
“You’ve never had problems with flings before.”
“And I don’t have a problem with this.” So long as he controlled his beast and didn’t accidentally maim her. “But don’t call her my girlfriend and don’t expect me to bring her home for dinner to meet the family.”
Raven snorted. “You haven’t met any of mine. I wouldn’t expect to meet any of yours.”
“You have a boyfriend?”
She flashed a hint of teeth, a mix of aggression and wicked sibling playfulness. “Do you honestly think I’ve been celibate for the last two hundred years?”
“A brother can hope.” He bared his teeth back. “Of course if you’re dating, that means I get to threaten someone.” His beast loved that idea.
“You’re not going to threaten anyone.”
“Oh, come on. Isn’t
that a rite of passage, for the older human brother to threaten the younger sister’s suitors?”
She rolled her eyes at him and headed back to the rooms with the mages. “They’re not called suitors anymore.”
“And I don’t have a girlfriend.” He dropped his attention back to his phone. Except he did, one he didn’t want to scare away when his beast seized control.
14
Sensation returned to Becca, oozing out of a clinging dark haze. Warmth surrounded her, softness lay beneath her, water — it sounded like a shower — ran nearby, and a soft feminine voice in the distance said something. No beep of a heart monitor, no acerbic reek of harsh cleansers, and — so far — no voice over a tinny speaker. The hospital was gone, and, from the lack of cold and dampness, the nightmare hadn’t returned her to the cave, either.
She fought the urge to open her eyes and see where she was, afraid that if she did, she’d learn she was wrong and still a prisoner.
In that moment, she felt safe. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt that.
Except that was part of the nightmare. She was safe, home in her bed in Toronto after an evening of dropping off coats, sleeping bags, and food to the homeless. The new kid had called in sick, so she’d gone alone, but that hadn’t been a concern. She’d been volunteering for almost a year now, and the locals knew her. Even if there was trouble, she wasn’t completely helpless. She could handle herself in a fight and likely more than a few people would jump in and help her if she needed it.
But there had been trouble. Monsters disguised as men had impossibly appeared out of whirling shadows, seized her along with two others, and the nightmare had begun…
No, the nightmare started before that? Men couldn’t just appear. She’d—
God, why couldn’t she remember how the night had ended?
The image of the devil’s master, Nero — God, he had a name — his dark, imposing figure standing three stairs up at the end of the walkway, jumped into her mind’s eye. His essence had captured her soul with a seductive strength and masculinity and called to something within her, and his thoughts had burned through her head. She was dangerous. He had to control the situation. He had to protect her.
