Shattered Spirits

by C. I. Black

  But maybe he could have the element of surprise and a means of escape if he timed it right.

  He barreled for the men. The first guy saw him, but Grey didn’t give him time to raise his gun. He leapt and rammed his fist into his face, knocking him to the ground.

  The second guy froze. Just for a heartbeat. But a heartbeat was all Grey needed. The elevator doors hit his foot and jerked open. Grey seized him and tossed him into the hall.

  Grey hit the close door button. The first guy groaned. The second guy rolled to his knees. Grey hit the close door button in a rapid tattoo. Close, damn it. Close.

  Second guy fired.

  Grey wrenched into the corner. A bullet slammed into the back of the elevator and the doors slid shut.

  Thank the Mother.

  It started to move, and Grey hit the stop button. He needed to get back to his den, grab some useful weapons, and then find Ryan and Capri.

  He drew breath to concentrate and summon a gate. Tremors slid through his body.

  They’d almost killed him.

  The tremors increased. His knees buckled, and he pressed his palms to the back of the elevator to keep standing. There, at chest level, was the bullet hole. It could as easily have hit him as it had the wall and he wasn’t a fast healer.

  The world darkened and the smell of wet garbage flooded his senses. Water dripped and someone chuckled, an ugly grating noise.

  “How fast can you heal, drake?”

  “Not fast enough,” someone else snickered.

  Pain seared his throat. He clamped his hands against his neck, but remembered blood welled behind his fingers. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see into the darkness. Memory twisted his assailants’ faces into hideous masks, then they jerked into crystal clear detail, every hair, every wrinkle, every freckle seared into a memory that just wouldn’t fade.

  He was going to die. He didn’t have enough strength to fight back and he wouldn’t heal in time to fight off that final blow. He couldn’t concentrate enough to call a gate, and he didn’t have any other magic.

  The agony of his slit throat billowed. His pulse roared.

  Except he hadn’t died. Hunter had found him. It was just a memory.

  He fought to concentrate past it and summon a gate. The darkness thinned in the center, revealing the elevator wall and bullet hole. He shoved through the gloom and planted his hand over the hole.

  Magic snapped over his fingers, darkness whirled around his palm, growing, growing. A gate. To home. To safety. He’d been out in the human world more times in the last two weeks than he had been in the last seventy years, and dragons kept trying to kill him, and he’d also lived more in the last two weeks than he had in the last hundred years.

  Someone yelled above and behind him and something pounded around the elevator. The security team was trying to get in.

  The magic of his gate locked within him, attaching to the other side, and he leapt through. The world wrenched around him and his foot hit the floor.

  “How fast can you heal, dragon?” The memory’s gloom swarmed him.

  No. He would not let it take hold.

  He shoved at it. Through the dark alley he saw rough-hewn walls. He was not in his suite in the Dragon Court. His gate had locked onto the main anchor at Court, and he was in the public gateroom.

  The memory of his attack flooded around him again.

  “Hell, no,” he growled.

  The memory snapped. A woman screamed and water danced on sunlight.

  Not that one, either.

  Gunfire spat around him and air, heavy with heat and moisture, pressed against him. The Korean jungle swept in to replace the medieval courtyard.

  Mother of All. No.

  A sharp inhalation cut through the gunfire and screaming. The jungle faded and an angel stood before him. No, not before him, on the other side of the gateroom in the archway to the hall. She was mesmerizing, straight dark hair, large dark eyes, and pale skin. Her small mouth was open in a shocked “oh” and she stood tensed, as if ready to run. But what drew him the most was a sense of the present. No achingly long history like he felt with most drakes, like he knew most drakes had. Unlike almost everyone else, he couldn’t remember her. Years of chance encounters didn’t flash into his mind. There were no conversations, no thoughts, no concerns about her. She was fresh, new, and something about her stilled the memories raging through him.

  “Who—?” He reached for her and staggered forward a step.

  Her eyes widened even more and with a squeak, she fled down the hall.

  The urge to run after her shot through him, but he stopped himself. Capri and Ryan were still in trouble. He needed to get to his den, arm himself, and get back to Barna’s gala. No. If Ryan’s vision was true, there was a chance they could lose Capri’s soul forever. Grey had to get Anaea and get her to Capri.

  The woman from the hall, whoever she was, was now seared into his memory, and unlike every other memory, he was grateful he’d never forget their too-brief encounter. When this was done, he would find her and demand that she tell him how she could ease the storm of memories within him with just a look.

  CHAPTER 43

  Capri and Ryan raced around a corner. They’d put distance between them and Katar’s dragon security force. She tugged his arm, stopping him, and pressed him against the wall. “I thought—” Mother, she’d thought so many things: that he didn’t love her, that she’d made him crazy, that she’d—

  It didn’t matter that they still had mages and Katar’s security team chasing them. She’d deal with that. But right now she needed a second with Ryan to prove he was real and not some delusion.

  He cupped her face in his hands and brushed his lips against hers. Electricity crackled over her skin, drawing an inferno of Odyne’s magic. Capri gasped and gripped the front of Ryan’s jacket to keep standing.

  “Hey?” he asked, his voice filled with worry.

  “I’m fine,” she said, struggling to breathe through the pain.

  “You don’t look fine.” He hooked a finger under her chin and urged her to look up.

  “But you do,” she said.

  “You’re not supposed to change the subject.”

  A shiver of agony slid through her. “Nothing can be done about it right now. So I’m trying not to think about it. How’s your head?”

  “I’m trying not to think about that, either.”

  “I’m sorry. It was the only way I could think of to make you believe.” It had been selfish. She’d wanted him to know the truth about her, about everything. “If I’d been thinking, I wouldn’t have—”

  “Broken a major dragon law?” A wry smile pulled at his lips.

  “Hell, no. I’d break every law there is for you.”

  “And I wouldn’t ask you to.”

  “I know.” But she’d do it to keep her inamorator safe. Except she hadn’t being keeping him safe when she’d slid her soul into him. She’d wanted him to understand and love her. “Still, I wouldn’t have been so selfish and risked your sanity.”

  “You needed me to know. I get that. I’m glad you did, because now a lot of things make sense.” He pressed close, his lips a breath from hers. “I’m also pretty sure my sanity was already in danger.”

  “And yet here you are. Perfectly sane.” God, she wanted him closer, wrapped around her, diving inside her.

  “I don’t think I was ever perfectly sane.”

  Someone yelled at the end of the hall.

  “And speaking of insane, I still have a problem,” she said.

  “Yeah, and Pimm is still somewhere around here.”

  Right. She’d forgotten about Pimm. “Jeez. The day just keeps getting better.”

  “Oh, and Katar is going to try to kill you.” Something dark flashed over his eyes as if he wasn’t telling her the whole truth.

  “How do you know? Aside from the obvious. Diablo said you’d called to warn me.”

  “Kind of my thing now.” He frowned. “Although
actually it’s been my thing for a while. Diablo and Raven say I’m a natural mage.”

  “But that’s not possible.” Humans couldn’t naturally connect to the earth’s magic; their souls weren’t strong enough.

  “Apparently it is. Which still doesn’t deal with Pimm.”

  “Or the security team Katar sent after us. Okay.” Capri leaned her head against the wall and met Ryan’s pale gaze. She could look into that gaze for the rest of her life—or rather Ryan’s, since he was still human.

  She shoved that heartache aside. They’d deal with that when they had to deal with it.

  “Okay,” she said again. “Barna is safe, so we can forget about Katar and deal with him later.” It would be a messy political situation, but given that Katar had ignored Barna’s commands, it would be safe to assume the doyen of the Major Brown Coterie would deal with his Second.

  “Pimm, however, is still here to reveal dragon-kind to the world. What do you think he’ll do if he can’t find Barna?” Ryan asked, but the answer was clear in his gaze. He was a cop, he’d seen men desperate to get their mission to the world. Pimm would do anything. If he couldn’t find Barna, he’d kill another dragon. And the building was filled with dragons.

  “How the heck are we going to find him?”

  “We—” Ryan straightened. His aura flared and his gaze grew unfocused. He grabbed her shoulders and wrenched to the side.

  Pain snapped through her at the sudden movement, and gunfire exploded into the wall where they’d been.

  A dragon—an average-sized guy with short-cropped red hair—adjusted his aim and fired again.

  Ryan yelled.

  Capri yanked him behind her and shoved him back. The bullets tore through her shoulder and arm—thank God the drake was a terrible shot. Pain roared through her, more painful than just a bullet wound. She gasped, her brain screaming. She couldn’t just stand there. She had to attack—hell, she’d take running if that kept Ryan safe. But the agony stole her movement, everything but the determination not to let her knees buckle. It lasted a heartbeat, no more, then she pulled her palm away from the healing hole in her shoulder.

  Ryan grabbed her bloody hand and they scrambled down the hall. Gunfire slammed into the wall ahead of them. They hit an intersection and raced right.

  Ahead stood two more security guards. One held a gun, while the other was empty-handed—although not weaponless—with a healed slash across his chest visible through his ripped T-shirt. Shock flashed across their expression.

  “We’ve got eyes,” the slashed-chest drake said into his radio.

  “Kill them!” a harsh voice screamed back. “She tried to kill our doyen.”

  Ryan squeezed Capri’s hand, and they raced in the other direction.

  “But the laws—” Slashed Drake said.

  “Are you questioning your Second?”

  Gunfire exploded past them again.

  Capri glanced back. The first dragon, the one who’d been shooting at them—Gun Guy—had joined the other two, who were now bolting down the hall after them. Capri’s heart pounded. She’d never wanted to be able to gate without an anchor so much before.

  They reached a set of wide glass doors and shoved them open, reaching one of the bridges cutting through the center of the complex and connecting two of Barna’s towers. A glass half-wall and semi-opaque floor gave the bridge the illusion that it was invisible and those crossing it the sense that they were walking on clouds.

  A whip of wind caught the door and tore it from Capri’s hands, slamming it shut in her face. The glass shattered and she wrenched aside, stumbling through Ryan’s open door.

  More wind snared that door and slammed it shut. Gunfire roared around them.

  Ryan’s aura burned, almost blindingly bright. He shoved her aside and a bullet whizzed between them. Whatever his earth magic was, it had something to do with foresight, since there was no way he could have known in time where that bullet was going.

  The magically summoned wind howled, growing in strength. It seized shards of glass and whipped them around her and Ryan. Pain sliced across her face, arm, legs, and across her back, pinpricks that healed in a second, but awoke Odyne’s painful magic, curled within the center of Capri’s being.

  A black vortex formed at the far end of the hall and the dragon whose side had been bleeding—a wiry man with a flat nose that had been broken too many times—stepped through the gate. He held a thin longsword in his hands, but his expression said he wasn’t convinced of his actions even though he’d now blocked their escape.

  “What are you waiting for?” Slashed Drake said from behind them. The wind billowed. More pinpricks sliced at her.

  Ryan growled. Blood from a cut on his cheek oozed over the clenched muscle in his jaw. His aura flared so brightly it was difficult to keep looking at him.

  “Do it.” Gun Guy fired, but nothing happened. He swore, ejected his clip, and shoved in another one.

  The drake with the sword growled and raised his weapon, but screamed instead of rushing forward. The tip of a blade protruded through his chest. He sagged to the ground, revealing Howard Pimm behind him. The human’s eyes were wild. He pulled his blade from Sword Guy and kicked him forward.

  “Where is your king?” Pimm said.

  “What?” Sword Guy gasped. Blood poured from the wound, pooling on the cloudy glass floor. He obviously wasn’t a fast healer.

  “I must know where your king is. Where’s Barna?” Pimm asked.

  “Not here,” Slashed Drake said.

  Pimm’s gaze leapt up, landed on Capri and Ryan, and narrowed. “So the human slave has taken the final step and embraced a demon. I won’t be able to save you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Slashed Drake asked.

  “The world must know.” Pimm gestured beside him, drawing Capri’s gaze. “And I’m showing them, right now.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. They were two stories up, in the middle of the main lobby, and the place was packed. At the far end, a stage had been set up for Barna’s big gala presentation, along with rows and rows of tables and chairs for the dinner. Set throughout the lobby all the way to the walkway colored silk, lit with red and orange lights, billowed within spikes of glass and metal. People dressed in their black-tie finest pointed and gaped, and only a quarter of them had a dragon’s aura. The rest were human. How long had they been watching? Had they seen Sword Guy’s gate?

  Glass shards clattered to the ground and the wind vanished.

  Everyone had certainly seen that.

  Pimm kicked Sword Guy forward. He scrambled to his feet, clearly less hurt than before. “Look and behold,” Pimm yelled, drawing more eyes to the walkway. He slashed Sword Guy’s arm, which bled but noticeably started to heal. People screamed and yelled and pointed.

  God dammit. She had to do something. She really wanted to stop Pimm, but that would leave her vulnerable to Katar’s men. Except if she didn’t activate her earth magic now it would be harder—maybe even impossible—to contain this.

  The stocky Chinese mage with lightning rushed around the corner to the shattered door. How the hell was he still alive and not in custody?

  He sneered, jerked his hand out, and yelled. Lightning exploded from his palm and slammed into Gun Guy. His firearm flew over the glass railing, and he collapsed to the floor, howling.

  More screams roared from below and people started running in all directions.

  Sword Guy leapt at Pimm, but he roared and swung his machete. The blade slammed into Sword Guy’s neck, severing muscle and bone.

  Time jerked to a halt. Everything froze: the people on the bridge, the chaos below. Then Pimm’s machete wrenched through Sword Guy’s neck, his head toppled from his shoulders, and his body crumpled to the floor.

  Slashed Drake yelled. Wind slammed into Pimm, crashing him through the glass doors on the far side of the walkway.

  Lightning exploded beside Slashed Drake, knocking him to his knees. Gun Guy jumped at the lightning ma
ge, who bolted back down the hall, while Pimm yanked a gun from under his coat, and fired. Bang, bang, bang.

  Ryan jerked Capri to the side. Two panels in the glass partition shattered, and Slashed Drake dropped to his knees. More bangs. More shattering glass. Slashed Drake collapsed to his side, unconscious.

  More screams rose from below.

  Click. Click. Pimm was out of ammunition.

  “Deal with that,” Ryan said, pointing to the chaos in the lobby. “You’re the only one who can.” He bolted down the walkway toward Pimm as the man grabbed a fresh clip from his pocket. He slid it into the gun, but Ryan was on top of him. He kicked the gun from Pimm’s hand. Pimm scrambled out of the way of the next kick, and punched at Ryan’s head.

  Capri wrenched her gaze from the two and yelled her power word. Magic flashed over her with a lightning agony. It stole her breath and threatened to steal her consciousness. Blackness washed over her with the promise of peace from the pain, but it wouldn’t keep dragon-kind’s secret and it wouldn’t keep Ryan safe. How many of the humans below, if they realized the truth, would become like Pimm? How many would see dollar signs when they looked at dragons? There would be a day when the world would know the truth, but today was not that day. Not if she could do anything about it.

  She shoved back the darkness and drew a ragged breath past Odyne’s pain. Her magic whirled through her, wild and unfocused. She said her power word again, concentrating on turning her magic into a thread, a brilliant, glowing thread.

  It crackled and writhed, fighting her will.

  Come on, damn it. Just become a thread.

  Her head burned. Her whole body burned. The magic had never done this before. But then, it had been different from the moment she’d met Ryan; even back in Elmsville, it had been different. Her magic had never been so unsure and painful before, as if Ryan weakened her.