But even as he bent down, a figure dressed in dark clothing crossed the street ahead, slipping onto the sidewalk and blocking his view. Shite. The intrusive bastard—whoever he was—was now walking behind the object of the Dragon shifter’s horny affections and potentially ruining his great non-plan.
And as far as Aegis could tell from behind, the man was keeping his eyes locked on the blond woman like a predator on a hunt for his dinner. Well, it was no wonder. He probably wanted to get to know her too; she was, after all, incredible. Maybe there was just something inherently stalkable about her.
And it wasn’t as though the Dragon shifter had laid claim to her. But I was here first, ya wanker.
As Aegis began walking again he picked up his pace. Something in the other man’s stride struck him as deliberate and unrelenting, setting off loud alarm bells inside his mind. The guy’s body language wasn’t that of a relaxed person looking for a date; it was tense, hurried and…odd.
And all too familiar.
The Dragon inside Aegis churned fire inside his belly, restless to gain answers. He sniffed the air, seeking to figure out just how much of a threat the guy was. But the wind wasn’t helping him; it did nothing but carry the intruder’s scent towards the woman who was now all but running ahead. No doubt she too could sense the threat behind her; women were supposed to be intuitive, after all. She was probably frightened. And Aegis, useless twat that he was, had done nothing to help because of some stupid desire to abide by the rules of etiquette.
His Dragon, however, had no interest in decorum or manners. He drove Aegis’s human side, commanding him to tread lightly on the ground as he pushed forward. The creature already wanted to explode from him, to swoop down at the woman's pursuer and to carry him far away and drop him onto the pointy spire of this or that church from hundreds of feet in the sky.
But he couldn’t, at least not yet. There was a chance that the bastard pursuing the goddess was human, and it wouldn’t do to attack one of them in Dragon form. That would be a great way to set the human population into a shifter-fearing panic, not to mention how much grief he'd get from his Guild for being a reckless idiot.
Still, if the fucker tried anything, Aegis would let his inner beast loose and face the consequences. That was his silent promise to the woman he had yet to meet. I will lose my shit if he touches you.
But even as resolve kicked in and he considered picking up his pace to a jog, the Dragon shifter's world momentarily slammed to a halt. The idiot driver of a bleedin' van chose just that moment to back out of a hidden driveway to Aegis’s right, cutting off his route and forcing him to freeze in place. His hands rolled into rock-hard fists as he waited for the overly cautious driver to turn onto the road. “Come on, come on,” Aegis muttered, looking for a way around the vehicle, which idled for far too long before finally moving out of his way. The entire delay was likely no more than five seconds, but it felt like a sodding year. Inside Aegis, his déor was raging, warning him that something had gone very wrong up ahead. She was in danger.
Let me out, the Dragon urged.
Not yet. Not until I know what's happening. Impulsive behaviour can lead to war.
Despite his internal protest, Aegis broke into a sprint the second the van pulled away, his eyes searching for the woman and her pursuer. He'd have no choice now but to listen to his Dragon and to intervene if the bastard tried anything.
But all he could see was an empty sidewalk stretching into the distant darkness, streetlights casting a dull glow on the desolate asphalt.
Somewhere up ahead, the shrill cry of a woman’s voice tore through the air like a knife’s blade.
Trapped
Ashlyn told herself that the scream couldn't possibly have come from between her lips. She was no wuss, she'd never been one to panic or grow hysterical in the face of danger.
Yet there was no denying that it was her voice that had pierced the cold night air.
Mere steps from her front door, her pursuer had made his move. And if his goal was to terrorize her, he’d succeeded.
Penetrating agony shot through her right shoulder as a powerful hand pried her arm nearly out of its socket. Ignoring the pain she spun around, wrenching herself free of his grip. And for a hopeful moment it seemed that those self defence lessons might pay off. But damn it, her stalker was fast. Before she knew it the bastard had grabbed her again, this time with both hands.
And this time he didn't make the mistake of underestimating her skills.
He held her fast, taking charge of her small body through unrelenting brute strength and the speed of a lunging cheetah. The assailant's movements flashed around her in a blur, Ashlyn’s mind barely grasping what he was doing to her, let alone how. All she knew was that whatever she was witnessing was impossible. No one could move that fast; her head had to be playing tricks on her. This whole goddamned night had been a mindfuck, starting with a sweet, sensual dream and concluding with a horrible nightmare.
Strong fingers pressed hard into her body as the massive hands uprooted her from the ground. Fear took hold of her tightening chest, capturing her second scream in its talons and squeezing the life out of it before another sound could emerge from her throat. In her panic she sensed the enemy all around her, a sweet-smelling entity of malice and hate. He was dragging her into the narrow passage between two buildings, pulling her fast. Too fast. She’d become nothing more than a rag doll in the hands of an impossibly powerful being.
Trying in vain to resist him, the soles of her boots were stubborn but ineffective brakes on the damp, cobbled ground. The beastly man didn’t seem to register her meagre resistance as he dragged her body, his hands clamped hard under her arms. The bastard was unbelievably strong, and she had gone devastatingly weak.
Finally the assailant stopped and spun her around to grab both her shoulders, ramming her body against a wall of cold brick. One hand was at her throat now, squeezing her windpipe and intensifying its grip. Little by little it tightened, a deliberately torturous threat against her very existence.
But she could still breathe, thank God. And she could still see. For the first time he showed himself to her, his face mere inches from hers now. Everything had begun to decelerate, her mind slowly beginning to regain control even as her life moved toward its end.
The experience of seeing her stalker's face was bizarre and dissonant; he wasn’t at all what she’d expected. In her mind’s eye she’d pictured a disheveled, dirty, homeless Mr. Hyde-type. Someone with madness in his eyes, yellow teeth, awful breath. But this man was the polar opposite of monstrous. He was elegant and well-dressed, with high, pronounced cheekbones. Bright, lively eyes, pale white skin. He was tall, muscular, and that strange, sweet scent poured off him like a rolling fog. Its strange, menacing sexuality was more threatening than appealing, drawing her in and repelling her all at once. Something in him aroused her, though she attributed her inappropriate reaction to a deepening fear. Terror, it seemed, screwed with a person's mind on every possible level.
The strange man examined her, holding her in his grip and at his mercy. Well, at least he wasn’t trying to kill her.
Yet.
“Who the fuck are you?” she managed to blurt out in spite of the nerves eating away at her gut, her voice hoarse under the powerful clench of his long, cold fingers.
“Doesn’t matter,” he growled, the words forming somewhere deep within his chest. Ashlyn thought she detected something feral in his tone. “It’s who you are that's important.”
“Who I am? I’m no one. I’m just an American tourist." A thought occurred to her as she spoke the words. "That's right, I'm American. If you hurt me, there’ll be trouble for you. Our government isn’t tolerant of…”
“Your government?” he scoffed, his lips curving up at the corners. He would’ve been very handsome if he weren’t so threatening, this one. “I don’t think your government would give a flying toss what happens to you if they knew what I know. And besides, you sell yourself short
, my beauty. You’re far from no one, at least in my world. You’re exactly who I wanted to find, in fact.”
“What are you talking about? You don't know me. You…you must be looking for someone else. Another blond woman, maybe.” Ashlyn could hear the pounding of her heart, sweat beading at the small of her back as she grasped at verbal straws. Fuck, fuck, fuck. How the hell do I get out of this?
“Oh, I'm not interested in any other blond women. I’m looking for you, Ashlyn Raleigh,” he purred, his eyes narrowing. His face moved in close, and he cocked his head like a curious dog or something far, far worse. Something beastly. “I know perfectly well who and what you are. And I know that you will guide me to the third Relic.”
Third Relic? What? Okay, well, clearly the guy was certifiably insane. Which either made him far less—or far more—frightening.
“Wait, what?” she blurted out. What the hell was a Relic? Her eyes shot around, searching the alley for hidden cameras. Was this a joke? Was she in an Indiana Jones movie? If so, she’d just met the bad guy, and his name was obviously Whacko McCrazypants. Holy crap, this guy was beyond mad.
She managed to offer him a retort in spite of his hand’s tightening grip on her throat. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And this isn’t one of those ‘I don’t know what you’re talking abouts’ that means ‘I actually do know, but I’m going to play dumb.’ I mean I literally have no freaking clue what kind of lunacy is coming out of your mouth.” As soon as she'd spoken the words she regretted it. She was provoking him, and the asshole was probably relishing it. More excuse to be cruel.
He moved closer, his breath casting a frosty cloud over her skin. His teeth…they looked strange. Too long, too jagged. Or else her imagination was screwing with her again.
“You will know what I’m speaking of soon enough,” he breathed. “When you find the Relic you will see. But I’m here to make sure that it never falls into the wrong hands. I’m here to make sure you do the right thing, for the good of your people. Do you understand me?”
Ashlyn’s fear was dissipating. This was all just too weird, and this dude wasn't right in the head. She might have even felt pity for the poor guy if not for the fact that he still had his hand wrapped around her throat.
“No, I don’t," she rasped. "All I understand is that you need to let go of me so that I can go home and consider not pressing assault charges against you. Listen, buddy—like I said, I’m American. I just got to England and I don’t know anything about a—”
The hand around her neck squeezed hard, severing her words mid-sentence. Ashlyn gasped for air that never came. Her desperate fingers wrapped around his forearms, though she knew she'd never find the strength to pull them away from her throat. Only one thought came to her mind.
So, this is how I’m going to die.
* * *
Aegis sprinted forward when the scream met his ears, sniffing like a bloodhound searching out his target’s scent. The woman—his goddess—and her pursuer weren't far off; that much he knew. But where the hell had they gone?
The Dragon shifter had already whipped by a series of residential buildings before realizing that their trail had gone cold. With apprehension clenching his insides he doubled back, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t find her too late. At last his eyes caught the narrow opening between two buildings, the only conceivable escape route off the street.
Bollocks! Bastard had taken her down an alley too narrow for his Dragon to negotiate without destroying everything in his wake. If only Aegis had listened to his déor earlier and taken the fucker out when he’d had the chance. If something happened to her…well, he’d hate himself forever.
At the alley’s entrance he narrowed his eyes to stare into the distance, focusing them on two black shadows connected by one long, extended arm. She was still alive, but the creeper had her pressed against the wall. Anger roiled up inside Aegis like lava, his Dragon huffing hot flame against his insides. Now the wanker was saying something to her. Negotiating, no doubt, trying to get what he wanted without any resistance from his victim.
Aegis moved towards them slowly, being careful not to startle the other man in case he reacted by lashing out at the woman. And that was when the Dragon shifter heard her voice for the first time, tight and strained against the hand at her throat. Christ, the arsehole was choking her.
“I’m American,” she was saying. When his ears detected the hoarseness on her voice, Aegis’s Dragon rolled itself into a searing ball of fire inside him, ready to erupt and unleash hell. More strained words. “I don’t know anything about a—” Her stalker squeezed an end to her sentence. Fuck, he really was going to kill her.
Aegis darted forward, prepared to tear the man-shaped excrement to pieces with his bare hands. But after a second he halted, freezing where he stood. Too stunned at what was unfolding in front of his eyes to advance. What the hell was happening? Surely she wasn’t…
Yes. She was.
In a frenzy of motion, the woman thrust her fists up between her stalker’s forearms and wrenched them apart. She shoved his chest hard and he flew backwards, slamming into the brick wall with so much force that the ground shook under Aegis’s feet. The man’s back was flat against stone now, and the woman was pressing a white-bladed knife to the his throat.
And the crazy bit was that all of it had happened in the space of less than a second.
Aegis gasped at the woman's superhuman speed. He’d never seen anyone move like that. Well, except for the Forsaken, but she wasn’t one of them; she couldn’t be. She didn’t look or smell like one of them, or even like an Enlightened, their less repugnant genetic relative. So who—or what—was she?
“Please. He’ll kill me if I don’t…” her assailant was speaking now, his voice pitiable and strained.
“Who will kill you?” the woman snarled. “What are you even talking about? Why did you follow me? Why were you trying to kill me?”
“Yes, I’d like to know as well.” Aegis spoke words calmly as he strode towards them both. His Dragon had settled for the moment, the situation apparently under control. The woman managed to maintain her focus, her eyes locked on the man who’d tried to choke her only a few seconds earlier. But Aegis thought he saw her sniffing the air as though attempting to assess his scent, to discern who was walking towards them. Strange behaviour for a human. “Tell me, are you speaking of a Forsaken?” he asked, looking towards the now helpless man.
“What the hell is a Forsaken?” the woman asked, her chest heaving from her exertion. Aegis tried his best to keep his eyes off her; seeing those beautiful tits moving up and down would be more than a little distracting in the face of an interrogation.
“They’re a species of half-breeds,” he replied, his eyes still avoiding the beautiful blonde in favour of burning holes in her prisoner. “And they’re not very nice to know.” He moved closer still. He could see the whites of the other man’s eyes, his fear palpable on the air. After holding all the cards, the wanker was now terrified. And he should be; no doubt he knew who and what Aegis was.
“Half-breeds?” the woman asked. “The only half-breed I ever met was a shepherd-poodle mix.” Her voice was returning to something approaching normal, and her American accent was charming. East coast, Aegis deduced. With a hint of the south, perhaps, or was it something else? God, she was a sexy thing. Stop getting distracted. You have work to do.
“I’d be happy to explain their genetics to you,” he told her. “But first, I think we should find out a little more about this one.” Aegis poked a finger towards her captive. “What are you?” he asked. He was examining him, sniffing the air. Now he could see the guy's face clearly, his keen eyes fully adjusted to the dark of the narrow passageway. But as his nose took in the other man’s scent, he froze again, shaken to his core.
“You are a Forsaken,” he murmured, studying the man’s eyes which were glowing bright now, the creature inside him itching to escape. “But this can’t be…you smell lik
e …”
The man nodded as best he could under the woman’s grip. “I smell like you.”
“No. It's impossible…” Aegis replied, his knees weakening under him. A cold, cruel fist had hit him in the chest, reality punching him with all the power of a heavyweight boxer. This man was half shifter, half vampire, like any Forsaken. But the shifter half was…
a Dragon.
The thought of it made Aegis want to retch. A clash of two such bloodlines was like mixing oil and water and then dropping a nuclear bomb on it; the two couldn’t coexist in one body, surely. Dragons hated the notion of blood-seekers who preyed on humans. The former were supposed to be the protectors of the human race, but this man was utterly corrupted, his déor infected by his toxic other half.
“Where did you come from?” Aegis all but shouted, his inner beast wanting to rise up and unleash a deafening roar in this traitor’s face. To tear into his flesh and punish him for his monstrous genes. “Who the fuck do you work for?”
“I work for…” the man replied, a tight grin appearing on his lips, “the Cause.”
“The Cause? What the hell is that? You said that someone would kill you. A cause is hardly likely to track you down and slit your throat.”
“My only interest is the good of my kind. I work to restore the rightful order of power.”
“Bullshit,” Aegis snarled through gritted teeth, ramming a fist into the man’s shoulder, pinning him just as the woman had done. “You don’t have a kind. You’re a fucking abomination. Your ilk kills humans. You work for those who would see the end of the Dragon Guild and all our kin. You’re one of them. You’re the lowest form of creature on this planet.”
The man thrust his chin up in a gesture of pride and defiance. “I work for those who would see the Dragons grow stronger than they ever were. For those who know that your kind has no business allying themselves with humans. It is you who are the traitor. You and your Guild of misfits.”
Dragon's Lover: Part One Page 3
