by Black, C. I.
No. Not there. He’d be able to find her.
She jerked back, leaving a bloody handprint on the door. Her only way of escape was to find people, but she didn’t know where she was.
The door to the stairwell opened and the man stepped through. His trench coat whipped out behind him as if caught by the wind. He tilted his hat back, revealing a dark, emotionless gaze. More white bullets appeared before his outstretched hand.
It wasn’t possible, but the ache in her arm and thigh were proof she wasn’t hallucinating. And as soon as she found help, she promised she’d think about it.
For a brief moment, she wondered if it was really happening, if she wasn’t still lying on the riverbank in the snow, dying. Maybe this was hell, or a near-death delusion. Which meant it didn’t matter if she ran or not, she was still dead. She wasn’t even sure why she was running in the first place. Hadn’t she wanted to die?
No, not like this. Not shot or tortured or beaten. And somehow she knew this man wouldn’t let her die a quiet, peaceful death.
A corridor lay ten feet away. She threw herself at it, but two bullets still pierced her back, sending a spray of blood exploding out of her chest. White-hot pain ignited within her. She gasped, too shocked to scream, stumbled and caught her balance. Blood seeped into the front of her top.
She staggered around the corner to find a dead end. No door, no stairwell, just a fresh cinderblock wall. She pounded on the stone, her mind unable to accept that there was no place to go.
The man eased around the corner and leaned against the wall, his hand raised, more bullets hovering before him. A wicked smile curled his lips, revealing yellowed teeth.
“I’d ask for the medallion, but I’ll just take it from your cold, dead hands.”
How clichéd. She snorted and coughed blood. It was ridiculous she’d even think that. She was about to die. She should be dead already, but maybe she’d gotten lucky and those bullets hadn’t hit anything vital. She had believed cancer would have been the harder death.
A million thoughts flashed through her mind and a new, encroaching fog threatened her consciousness. She struggled against it. She would not succumb, would not lie down and die. This was not her choice, and she’d be damned if she’d let him kill her.
She lunged at him.
He shot at her and two more bullets lanced her chest. She staggered, grabbing the front of his coat. Heat poured down her arms and blue flame burst from her hands, hissing and snapping. Anaea screamed and batted at the fire. She was burning, bleeding, dying. The fire leapt from her fingers to the man. His trench coat ignited and he, too, screamed and flailed.
She staggered back and the flames on her arms extinguished, her flesh unharmed. But the man continued to scream and burn, the fire engulfing him until he was consumed.
Bile burned the back of her throat. It was such a horrible way to die. Not much worse than being shot to death, although, now that she thought about it, the absence of extreme pain or burns astonished her. She hurt, and every time she moved it felt like sharp pokers were lancing through her, but it was almost bearable. Perhaps she was light-headed from the blood loss, or too numb to feel the pain she knew she should.
Regardless, she needed a doctor.
Not a good idea.
Which didn’t make any sense, unless her death wish had finally kicked in. She could just fall asleep as she bled to death and that would be the end of it. Besides, if she found a doctor they’d keep her in the hospital. Which was the last place she ever wanted to be again. That, and someone would find the bodies and questions would be asked. She couldn’t afford to still be here when that happened.
Yes, that made sense. She didn’t want to spend what little time she had left talking to the police and wrapped up in some court case.
No. No, that was ridiculous. She had holes in her body. Admittedly they were small ones, but they went all the way through. It was a miracle she was still standing and not feeling much pain. But maybe that was just shock.
The fog pressed at the edge of her senses.
It was a dream. All a dream.
She stumbled, caught her balance with a hand against the wall and left a bloody smear on the white primer. It didn’t matter how she felt about hospitals or the police, she needed help.
* * *
Hunter shoved Anaea’s consciousness back into the psychic box he’d constructed for her. The whole situation was racing out of control. The fact that his two assailants hadn’t healed meant they were human mages, not dragons. The only way for a human to have magic was if someone had purposefully broken dragon law by body-sharing until the human’s body had connected to the earth’s magic. And when he had time, he’d consider all the ramifications of that. None of them were good.
To make matters worse, Anaea shouldn’t have woken, and if her body hadn’t been so damaged by the cancer, she wouldn’t have. His soul magic was divided among too many things. If only he could make it not heal her, but that happened on a subconscious level. It would be easier to tell himself to stop breathing.
Fiery pain washed over him as he regained control. He gasped and sucked in a slow breath. It would pass. Not soon, but it would pass. As much as Anaea wanted to find a doctor, he didn’t. He’d tried to convince her otherwise, but he couldn’t get through to her with subtle suggestions, and revealing himself to her was the very last option. Thank goodness she’d so quickly established a connection to the earth’s magic or they’d certainly be dead.
Although that created a whole other problem, since now Anaea was evidence that Hunter had broken dragon law as well. If he was lucky, really lucky, he might still be able to convince her subconscious that calling fire had been a hallucination or a dream and he wouldn’t have to uphold dragon law and kill her.
He coughed blood and shuffled to the stairwell door. If he could get to the morgue, he could get a new body, but Anaea was too damaged to survive. She lived only because his magic was focused on her body’s injuries. It would take time to heal. Sure, the bleeding had stopped, but internal organs took longer to repair and his magic was the only thing keeping them alive at the moment. It wouldn’t be safe for him to transfer out of her for at least a few hours.
He had hoped to be long gone by that time. Of course, the woman was dying of cancer. Wouldn’t it be a kindness to transfer to another vessel and let her slip into death while still unconscious?
The stairwell door swung open before he could reach it and a woman in a long black coat strode toward him. Her blond ponytail swished over her shoulders, accentuating her long neck. She flipped her coat open, revealing a long sword strapped to her hip.
Shit. At least they were recognizable by their dress code. Hunter felt for his body’s magical thread, the single thing connecting him to the earth’s magic. It wasn’t there. He concentrated, searching faster, but couldn’t find it. It had to be somewhere. There was no other way Anaea could have called fire.
CHAPTER 4
“All I want is the medallion, Hunter,” the woman said. The fact that she knew his name suggested she was in league with a dragon, or was a dragon herself. And until he had a stable connection to the earth’s magic, he wouldn’t be able to sense if she was or not—and maybe not at all, depending on how this body connected to it. He didn’t recognize her, but that didn’t mean anything. Accidents requiring a transfer into a new vessel, while infrequent, did happen. The irony of this situation was not lost on him.
She drew her sword. The ponytail made her face look pinched and stern. “The medallion.”
He scrambled back, and pain washed over him. This damned body wasn’t healing fast enough. Gulping air, he kept moving, past the dead-end corridor where the seared corpse of his new assailant’s associate lay, and continued to the next one. This wasn’t a dead-end and he turned down it. With the clean edge of his lab coat, he twisted the handle of the second room he found and leapt in. He searched for a lock but there wasn’t one. So much for that idea.
Pressing his b
ack to the door, he took a cursory note that it was an unoccupied private room with nothing in it that looked as though it could bar the entrance or be used as a weapon.
The handle rattled and the door shoved forward. Hunter stumbled and it flew open. The woman jabbed her sword at him and he twisted out of the way, shoving an empty trolley between them.
She kicked it aside and lunged again.
Hunter rolled over the bed, grinding his teeth against the pain. If he were in his old body... but he wasn’t and he needed to stop thinking like that. He needed to get creative. He yanked open the drawer of the bedside table in search of a possible weapon. Inside was a leather-bound Bible and nothing else. The woman slashed at him over the bed. He ducked and grabbed the book.
The woman shoved the bed toward him. He slid under it and slammed the Bible into the side of her knee. She dropped to her other knee and brought the sword around at his head. He deflected her swing with the Bible against the flat of the blade, thankful she didn’t have enough room for full range of motion. With a growl, he smashed the book into her face, up and back.
He didn’t wait for her to react. He needed to stay close, making it impossible for her to use her sword. He launched forward and rammed the Bible’s spine into her temple. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she crumpled to the floor.
Hunter tossed the book on the bed and staggered out of the room. He’d bought just enough time to escape without drawing more attention by running. If the woman was a dragon, she’d wake soon and be back on the hunt. As much as he wanted to search her for clues to identify the traitor she worked for, there just wasn’t the time. He needed to put as much distance between them as possible.
He went back down to the first dead mage in the basement, wiped his hands on a clean corner of the dead man’s shirt and shrugged into his trench coat. It wouldn’t be good if someone stopped him to ask about the blood on his clothes—or the rest of him—and while this man’s coat was stained it looked more like water on the black fabric than blood. He continued down the hall, past the morgue, and up a back stairwell.
The first exit he came to opened onto an alley lined with dumpsters. Still aware that his misappropriated body was healing, he eased down the stairs and headed to the busy main street where he could hail a taxi or find a phone and call one.
What a mess. But with dragon-kind growing frustrated over Prince Regis’s laws restricting dragon liberties—particularly concerning the duration spent among humans—it didn’t surprise Hunter that some drakes would attempt subversion. And now Hunter was the one being hunted.
He amended that. It wasn’t really him they were after, but the medallion. Not a comforting thought since he was still in their way. Without a doubt, there was a dragon pulling strings and purposefully breaking dragon law.
Only a dragon would know the power the medallion had over dragon-kind, or want it. With the use of ancient Egyptian, the likeliest suspect was Zenobia, but he hadn’t thought she’d be so foolish. But then again, for all he knew, Regis had grown tired of Hunter’s service and was trying to eliminate him—since murder was how Royal Assassins were fired.
A taxi a few feet away flicked on his ‘in service’ light, pulled a u-turn, and drove away. The next closest one was three blocks down in front of a billboard touting the town’s urban revitalization plans tagged with black and red graffiti.
“Hey, baby,” a masculine voice said.
Hunter glanced at the man leaning against a pizza shop window. His clothes were stained and ripped and his hair was greasy and unkempt. Ah, the human race at its best. He pitied the poor woman who’d attracted this man’s attention.
“Sweetie, don’t give the cold shoulder.”
Hunter kept walking. He wished he could do something for the woman being accosted, but he wasn’t in any kind of shape for more confrontation. Besides, he was trying to keep a low profile.
The drunk ran up to Hunter’s side and draped a heavy arm across his shoulders.
“Baby,” Drunk said in a low voice.
Shit.
He’d forgotten he was a woman.
How did a woman brush off a man? They always made it look so easy. Not that he’d been on the receiving end very often, but it was bound to happen at least a few times in two thousand years. He needed to keep walking.
Hunter shrugged off Drunk’s arm and sped up. The taxi was only one more block away.
Drunk scurried to Hunter’s side and put his arm back across his shoulders. “Is that the way to treat a fine man like me?”
Hunter rolled his eyes. He’d seen finer. Heck, he’d been finer.
He should say he’s married.
He didn’t know where the idea had come from, but he couldn’t say that, he had no proof. His gaze jumped to his hands. He hadn’t even thought to check if Anaea was married. Her fingers were splashed with blood, Anaea’s and the mage’s, but she didn’t wear a ring.
Relief flooded him. He wasn’t sure why. In truth it was sad this woman was so completely alone. Kind of like him. Except his empty life was by choice.
Of course, he didn’t really know anything about her at all. There probably was someone who loved her and waited for her to return home. Which meant he had two days to take care of business before a missing persons report was filed and the police started looking for him... her.
The Dragon Court Clean Team was going to love him. Blood and an abandoned car on the Queen Street Bridge and two, maybe three, bodies in the hospital. He was going to have to buy Capri a half dozen more rare orchids for her hoard just to stay on her mostly-pleasant side.
“Listen,” Hunter said, “my boyfriend is waiting for me.”
Drunk squeezed Hunter close. “I’m sure he’ll share.”
“After ten years in the state pen for manslaughter...I doubt it.”
Drunk leapt back as if he’d been stung.
Hunter bit his lip, forcing his expression to remain blank. He wasn’t sure where that line had come from, but it worked wonders. He’d have to keep it in mind the next time he was stuck in a female body—which was going to be never if he had any say in it.
“You’re joking, right?”
Hunter shook his head. “I suppose we could ask him.”
Drunk didn’t respond. He spun on his heel, found a new target across the street, and rushed away. Hunter didn’t wait for anyone else to take his spot. He marched to the closest taxi and got in, and instructed the driver to take him to the train station.
* * *
As the taxi pulled up to the station, Hunter scanned the area for anyone dressed in a dark trench coat. There was no one around. It was late, at least an hour past midnight, and passenger trains didn’t run at this hour in Elmsville. Good, since it would be easier to spot danger, and yet bad since he’d stand out like a sore thumb on the security cameras.
He paid the driver and got out. He’d need another taxi to get to his hotel, but he’d call one from a different company to cover his tracks.
The snow had been shoveled from the walk and his boots crunched on the salt. He checked out the waiting area through the large windows as he approached.
Still empty.
The glass door was heavier than he remembered, reminding him that the last time he was at the station he’d been healthy and male. Little things seemed off to him, ever-so-slightly bigger or taller, and he wondered how long it would take for him to get used to it.
He shook his head. He wasn’t going to get used to it. He’d contact Grey, have him arrange for an appropriate body, then hand over the medallion with Saber’s soul inside ready for rebirth and make his own, discreet transfer. Grey would know what kind of body to look for. They both had an appreciation for warriors after taking their Crusaders.
The lockers sat to the right of the building in a narrow hall just past the public washrooms. He’d lost his key when he’d lost his body, but a dragon didn’t go more than a few centuries without picking up some useful skills.
He eased over to h
is locker, at the far end, almost out of sight of the security camera, and blocked the view with his body. He could only get away with blocking the camera for a moment before drawing attention to himself, but the lock on the door was simple and would only take a few seconds to pick.
He bent the bobby pin at a right angle, scraped the plastic tip off one end, slid it into the lock, and froze. His fingers held it, he could feel it, but he couldn’t move his hands. He tried to glance over his shoulder but couldn’t turn his head, either.
Where am I? What am I doing? Anaea’s sudden thoughts washed over him.
He gasped.
No, he didn’t gasp. She did. He dove into his mind to find the breach in his psychic box. But it was gone. There was no indication it had ever existed. He hadn’t even noticed its disappearance and he couldn’t figure out what had happened.
Neither can I. Anaea looked at her hands, making his head move against his will.
He struggled to regain control, but couldn’t break her will this time. He had to do something or a security guard would figure out that something wasn’t right.
CHAPTER 5
Hunter grasped at the first thing that came to mind. You’re having a bad dream. The situation was past any graceful salvage. He’d take whatever worked.
How can I be having a bad dream when you just thought about needing to do something about me?
Who do you think you’re having a conversation with?
Her thoughts flashed through him as she considered the possibilities.
Someone shot me, she said without the panic he’d expect.
A dream, remember.
Oh.
You should go back to sleep.
She giggled at the ridiculousness of that, but thankfully their body stayed silent. How can I go back to sleep when I’m already asleep?
