Storm of Reckoning

by Doranna Durgin

  But the other man fell on Trevarr with a vengeance. Buff’s gun discharged again and Sklayne cried, ::No, no, no!::

  The gun flew to the side, clattering off a small dresser now jammed crookedly against the wall. Garrie’s howling victim lurched for her and fell, all the while his pal whaled on Trevarr’s back and ribs and shoulders — but it was Buff beneath him who shrieked as something cracked loud and clear.

  In that instant, all the men froze.

  Trevarr hesitated, every muscle quivering with restraint, and Garrie knew the restraint for the gift it was: the final moment in which these men could still leave, calling it victory simply because they were still alive.

  But Garrie’s target twisted away, and his movement spurred the uninjured man to renew his attack from behind, and the moment was over. Trevarr whirled — a creature of deadly beauty and grace, the knife trailing in a gleaming slice of metal and suddenly spurting blood.

  It took the man an instant to realize he’d been cut, his arm gaping to the bone and pumping blood, the preternaturally sharp Keharian blade skipping across collarbone and chin and flaying the far side of his face.

  Garrie stuttered in conflicting impulses — horrified at the blood spray and driven by the roiled-up furies battering around inside her and then entirely aghast at the dark stain spreading across Trevarr’s side. “No!” she cried. “Not again!”

  And so she lost control of the burning cold that charged along her spine, igniting her soul. The dragon rose up and overtook her, laying dark red blood over her vision and drawing a crackle of lightning along her skin, tracing lines of sensation that tightened her skin beyond bearing. Power demanded power, drawing upon the parched earth until it groaned beneath them.

  Trevarr cursed resoundingly in the foreign tongue that suited his sharp cut of consonant and vowel so perfectly, looking suddenly earthbound — suddenly with the look of someone who needed a porch post for surreptitious support.

  Buff stretched for the gun, pushing himself along the floor. Bleeding guy fell slowly to his knees. Limping guy shoved Garrie aside, recovering a blackjack and facing off against Trevarr. A fourth, battered man struggled out from under the upturned bed.

  And inside Garrie, the dragon raged.

  She knew, then, that she could end this. Floundering in a rage of power, she still knew exactly what she was doing; she knew exactly how much devastation she could wield. I can stop this right now. I can —

  “Atreya! No!” But Trevarr went down under a well-placed blow from behind. He snarled, whipping his hand back. His knife sank hilt-deep into the side of his attacker, the man who now had so much more than a limp.

  I can stop this right now. I can —

  Thought gave way to the wail and crash of conflict splashing along the inside of her spine, burrowing in her chest... sinking in through the heart of her. She could no longer breathe, only gasp — huge, ragged breaths, with the power gathering at her fingertips.

  Sklayne dashed between Garrie and Trevarr — did a flip off the wall and dashed through again, sending out a crashing wave of energy, all incandescent ripples and a foaming wake.

  Trevarr jerked his head up as the energies hit; his eyes gleamed hard and bright. His hand barely hesitated at his boot as he stood, whirling around with an expert snap and release to pin Buff’s hand to the baseboard, a small, stout knife deeply embedded.

  Garrie’s hands tingled; her vision bled red and gray at the edges. “You shot him,” she snarled at Buff, holding up such a nimbus of energy that all the men froze, mouths snarling on fear.

  She bathed the room in marbled light, tipping her head to look at Buff from beneath a lowered brow. “Looks like I do assholes after all.”

  Her voice didn’t quite sound like her own. Sweet, sweet completion flared at her fingertips; a cry of exultation swelled in her throat.

  And something slammed into her from the side.

  It was hard and muscled and profound, and it took her down — arms flying, legs akimbo, and yet somehow landing to roll aside with control, intersecting with a reddish-buff blur that had far too many claws. A sizzling rainbow splash of color instantly engulfed them, and Garrie screamed — in rage, in disbelief at perfection thwarted, a raw and primal sound that slapped into utter dead silence as color shifted to unrelieved moments of velvet darkness.

  ~~~~~

  Darkness dropped away.

  They rolled across hard rock and then thick padding over rock, furs and leather and wool and sharp evergreen spice. Garrie fought back — screaming incoherent fury and forgetting that she should probably be afraid while she was at it. Afraid of the circumstances, afraid of Trevarr, afraid most of all of herself. She jerked and struggled, and as they slammed up against intractable rock wall, she pounded fists against him — wherever she could reach, indiscriminate and packed with ethereal energies turned physical.

  “Atreya,” he said, breathless and struggling to hold her, pure strength no match for the frenzy of her. “Find yourself!”

  Find herself? It only inflamed her. Nothing. There is — “Nothing!” she cried — incoherent still, nothing but a morass of runaway energies and uncontrolled emotion.

  Maybe it didn’t have to make sense; maybe he understood her anyway. “Give it to me,” he told her, rising above her while a thick rug pressed against her back, finally capturing her wrists in a punishing grip at either side of her head. “What you cannot take—”

  ::No, no, have care!::

  The wiser voice, but Garrie had nothing left to heed it. She flung excess at him, still fighting him — wrists pinned, hips clamped between his thighs, legs hooked by his feet. She forgot he was there to help and she punished him for it, throwing the dragon at him — a dark scrape of angry pain and longing that bled at her sanity.

  He stiffened; his grip on her wrists tightened against her bones. His presence expanded into the darkness, damp cave air alive with the stark, sharp wood smoke of his own inner battles. But he absorbed what she threw at him, jerking with it, pain grinding in his throat.

  Garrie fought him no less for it, wanting nothing but freedom — the freedom to explode into something no longer Garrie at all, a demanding culmination just out of reach and beyond bearing.

  His eyes gleamed faintly; he snapped a harsh command and a blue-white lamp glowed to life across his lair. She saw the strain on his face — jaw clenched, nostrils flared — and she just didn’t care. She threw him more — saw the jerk of it this time, his eyes widening, his mouth finding a snarl of determination. Saw the truth of it this time — that he, too, wanted more.

  She did the only thing she had left to her, pinned so butterfly-flat, hips rising to meet his and igniting a brand new sweet fire in the white-hot whirlwind of the rest of her. He closed his eyes, and his groan rumbled in the backdrop of ragged breathing and Garrie’s efforts to free herself.

  But to her utter surprise, Garrie was the one who crumbled. “Please,” she said, and the word caught in her throat, a hiccup of desperation. “I can’t—”

  He struggled with himself — an intimate battle, shuddering through his body until he gulped air, breaking the contact between them — if only to lean in closer, to find the side of her face and press his own against it. “Is this,” he said, his voice in her ear and no less strained, “what you truly want?”

  Big brave reckoner, facing her demons — cruelly using the man who’d so quickly become so important, lashing him with her retribution because she knew, she knew she couldn’t give into this thing and yet she didn’t know how not to.

  Damned if she didn’t just burst into tears, twisting her head aside and still pinned, his body stretched out over hers.

  He instantly released her; she covered her face. “Go away!” she sobbed, not all that coherently.

  “Is that,” he said, “what you truly want?”

  “Yes! No!”

  He released a pained breath. “Ebb and flow, atreya.”

  Except this was beyond ebb and flow, beyond tolera
ble, beyond thinking —

  Oh. No.

  It... wasn’t.

  He’d absorbed it; he’d done what she hadn’t been able to. She’d thrown everything at him and added her own wild twist, and if she knew she’d find his eyes unearthly and his expression fierce and wild, she also knew it was exactly that part of him that had handled her turmoil.

  Human phaser on overload. Not so pretty when it happened from the inside out.

  “Atreya?”

  She pulled her hands aside, regarding him; she especially regarded his neck, so close. So convenient. She licked it, salt and tang and oh, the scent of him. And she startled a little as he stiffened, pulling back.

  Too late. Oh, far too late. He shifted from his knees to his feet in a heartbeat, standing — bringing her with him. Backing her, her feet barely touching the ground, long strides until her shoulders hit hard stone — the side of the cave. “Is that,” he said, his hands slapping up against rock on either side of her head, “what you want? Is this?”

  A man with limits, after all. And if she’d been in ebb, now she found herself in flow again, intensely aware of every sensation — from the warmth of his breath in her ear to the press of his belt buckle against her stomach to the push of his body against hers — the deep struggle of his breath, hips still only because he held himself so very, very tensely — and that, she knew for certain because her hands, the greedy things, had ended up exactly where she could feel the quiver.

  Biggest muscle in the body and so worth all the attention it got.

  “Atreya,” he said, and his mouth hovered just over hers.

  “You,” she said suddenly, startling herself. “I want you. If this is you — if this is us—” Her hands, like her tongue, had a mind of their own; they flexed, pulling him closer. She blew a puff of a breeze at him — not the harsh, angry heat from moments earlier, but light and soothing and meaningful and she knew just exactly what it would do to him. For him.

  He trembled and grew harder against her, and her flush of responding warmth had nothing to do with her dragon — that which still hovered and teased and licked around the edges.

  “Sometimes,” he said, the raw whisper of his lips brushing hers, “this —” he hunted control “ — is me. Sometimes the other.”

  “Either way,” Garrie breathed, and lifted her head to turn the movement into a kiss, the breeze into a nudge, her hands moving intimately on his backside.

  His breath hissed in; his fingers dug into rock at either side of her head. “Be sure,” he told her. “Be sure or stop—” A shiver took him, down his back to her caressing hands. “Oh gods,” he said, desperate beyond any measure, “or stop now.”

  Stupid to say that fear didn’t shiver through her. Fear of what she’d become — fear of his need so raw and fierce and wild, right here in her hands. But she’d stopped being surprised at herself long before this, and now —

  Now —

  She pulled him even closer, hands demanding. Something in him let go — a shudder, a groan... a surge of energy. Dark, like that he’d given her; a wave of sensation and strength, given its freedom. Beyond stopping.

  She’d thought he would be fierce and hard and sudden, taking and demanding. She thought he’d ride the edge of control... that he’d lose it.

  But she’d also once thought him cold and unfeeling, and she’d been wrong about that, too.

  Oh, how she’d been wrong.

  He did all those things she thought he would. But not until after he’d gathered her up for a deep and astonishingly tender kiss, mouth and lips and tongue. And not until his hands had roamed her body, finding every possible tender, responsive spot. Not until she’d had the chance to push aside his shirt, returning the favor and gauging success by his rumbling purrs, the tight and trembling tension in his lean body, muscles clenching into definition beneath her touch. And his breathing, oh yes, his breathing. His cries, gusting out between clenched teeth.

  And by the time he did turn fierce and hard and sudden, it was all that Garrie wanted from him. By the time he lost that fine edge of control, she’d lost hers. By the time he’d given everything of himself, panting and raw and primal, she matched him cry for cry, and the dragon within her rose to grasp, at last, at incandescent completion.

  And there in the height of it, lost to herself, lost to him, she breathed the clear, cutting scent of wood ash and dry hard spice; a deep and satisfied rumble echoed in her bones.

  Over it all came the soft, astonishing susurrus of massive wings, unfurling for flight.

  Chapter 19

  It’s Complicated

  “True understanding of your companions is a gift.”

  — Rhonda Rose

  “I need some — dammit!”

  — Lisa McGarrity

  “Leftovers, mine?”

  — Sklayne

  Garrie came back to her senses in a cave on another world, bathed in an unearthly cool blue light.

  Naked.

  Of course.

  Her back pushed against the hard, smooth rock wall of that cave; her legs wrapped around damp flanks, her arms around strong shoulders, and her fingers still dug into the faint raised pattern of feathery scales over warm skin. Their bodies shifted, skin whispering against skin as they each gulped for breath, still pressed warmly together.

  No clothes for Trevarr, either. His legs had given way, leaving him on his knees while one hand still cradled her head, protecting it from the rock behind her.

  She eased back, instantly regretting the fraction of space between them. His hair had fallen from its clip, thick and loose and just crisply wiry enough to be not quite human; she threaded her fingers through it. The braids teased her fingers, surprising her with the faint trickle of power, and she captured one.

  His hand closed over hers. “Sha,” he said. “Have a care.”

  The things you never knew.

  He breathed against her cheek, turning it into a deliberate caress. “Atreya.”

  “Yeah,” she breathed back. Yes, I am. Heart-bonded, he’d said once.

  He’d been right.

  “Hey,” she said. “Where are my clothes?”

  He shrugged.

  “Hey,” she said, a little more sharply. “We didn’t use protection.”

  “We are safe here.” He ran a hand down her side, tracing every spare line in a reverent way that, for the first time farking ever made her feel as if she had curves.

  “Not that kind of protection,” she said, spiking a minor buzz of panic.

  He frowned, his hand spanning over her flat belly. It lingered at her navel before his fingers moved on to encompass her ribs, the thumb heading for greener pastures as it traced the gently plump curve of her breast. “Then what?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t people on this world protect themselves against STDs? You know? Diseases? And babies?”

  He looked truly startled. “We have no need to protect ourselves against babies —” But no. Understanding interrupted him. “Ah. Freshening. That is not a concern with me.”

  Way to go, mouth in foot. Not to mention that weird little ping in her heart, especially given she’d never been the maternal type. “I’m sorry.”

  “I have always known it,” he said, as if it both didn’t and did matter to him.

  “Well, I’m safe,” Garrie said, trying to absorb the layers behind such words, not quite succeeding. “I mean, it’s been since—”

  No, she wouldn’t say Quinn’s name out loud. Or she wouldn’t finish saying it, anyway.

  From the sudden gleam in Trevarr’s eye, she thought she’d made the right choice. From his hands, suddenly possessive again, she thought she’d totally made the right choice.

  Not that she didn’t return the favor, pulling herself closer to nibble kisses across the plane of his chest and its softly raised patterns. He growled at her, and if there was a deep laugh behind the sound, there was also enough movement inside her to tell her just how well he liked that touch.

>   In an instant, her own response surged; just like that, he loomed above her — hands claiming her body, mouth claiming her skin, until the dragon roared back up with a rush of power to take them both. Grasping, groping, panting acquisition — until Garrie cried out a startled white-hot explosion with his uninhibited shouts in her ear, every bit as fierce and wild as she’d ever imagined. In that moment, in the very tiny corner left of her thinking mind, she knew he was every bit this much not safe.

  That having given so deeply of herself to him, she was now irrevocably lost in him.

  Forever.

  ~~~~~

  Sklayne extruded four extra feet from his back and fumbled his harvest of the day — pungent leaves and sticky branches dragging behind him in this familiar self-form.

  Not his pure form, but the solid form he’d taken all his life... not so different from cat. Bigger... bigger ears, with glorious tufts. Shorter tail, brisk in its expressions. Small opposable thumbs, set beside sharp spurs. Poison there, oh yes. And much with the teeth. Lovely long canines in paired sets. Wonderful leapy hind legs. Striking color, stark silvered patterns to hide in dappled shadows at the edges of black woods and bright clearings.

  Well. What Sklayne had thought of as bright until he had been taken to other worlds. Until he had been taken to Garrie’s world.

  Taken, taken, always taken. Never choice.

  Because that choice had been made long before, and if he now longed for his dappled shadows, it made no difference at all.

  A tedious thing, traveling distance on foot. Better to travel in ethereal form, pulsing energies soaking up sustenance and skipping over all the hard bits. But no, once he had things, he must walk like any being.

  Trevarr’s safe place sat in high rock, hidden amongst other rock and surrounded by the black woods and the deep black fog, thick close conifers reaching into each other, twisting upward and jabbing sharp dead limbs downward. Here, the land jutted into unpredictable features; here the shadows held secrets.