by Julie Wetzel
Byrd keened at him, unable to face the memories of Raven’s last hours, but Noah ignored him and concentrated hard on what he could remember. She hadn’t been herself that morning. He’d thought it had to do with the collar, but could he have been wrong? The pain and crying from Byrd got worse as he worked his way through his memories, trying to recall any detail that would give him an answer.
“Noah!”
Kara’s sharp words yanked him out of his thoughts. The most horrible sound was rattling from his chest, and his eyes burned as if someone had shoved red-hot pokers in them. Kara’s arms were wrapped around him, holding his head against her chest. Anguish like he’d never known tightened his chest and made him gasp for breath. Something hard skittered over his cheek and plinked down onto the seat next to Kara. She shushed him and whispered soft words that eased the dragon’s pain. After a few minutes, the grief lessened, leaving Byrd spent and Noah feeling like a heel.
“Are you better, sweetheart?” Kara asked as her grip on his head relaxed.
Byrd nodded and shifted back to lie on the seat. Still needing the comfort of touch, his head rested on Kara’s leg.
Running her fingers down his back, Kara settled Byrd in place before putting the car in gear and pulling back out into traffic.
“I’m sorry, Byrd,” Noah whispered to him and drifted in his guilt. He had been so caught up in studying the moment that he hadn’t considered how Byrd would handle it. “Forgive me?”
Noah could feel the dragon’s energy floating around him. There was a touch of resentment there, but after a few minutes of Kara’s soft fingers rubbing over his scales, Noah got his answer.
“Yes.” There was a wave of warning that went with the word.
Noah swallowed. “We will have to remember this moment,” he warned.
Byrd’s energy swirled with grief. “We knows.” Pulling away, Byrd’s energy curled up in a ball at the back of Noah’s mind, leaving Noah to deal with the pain and exhaustion the episode had caused.
Noah savored it as his punishment and vowed to not put Byrd through that misery again unless it became necessary.
***
The rest of the ride to Noah’s house was spent in quiet with Kara’s fingers rubbing the tension from Noah’s neck. For a while, he thought about punishing himself more by moving out of her reach, but her touch soothed Byrd, so he stayed where he was but tried not to enjoy her caress.
Finally, when she pulled into his drive and shut off the car, he sat up. “I’m sorry,” he apologized.
Kara turned and glared at him. “As you should be,” she snapped. “Your dragon is a sweet and sensitive creature and doesn’t deserve to be abused like that. And if you’re too much of a knucklehead to see that, I’ll—”
“I’m sorry,” Noah said a little louder, cutting her off. “It won’t happen again.”
Kara glared at him for minute longer. “See that it doesn’t.” Yanking on the handle of her door, she popped it open, got out, and slammed it before Noah could get up.
“She’s mad at me,” he said to Byrd.
Amusement rolled up from the dragon.
“Laugh it up, fuzzball,” Noah snarked. “Her being mad at me is going to get in the way of your mating plans.”
Byrd growled at him. The door opened up on the tail end of the rumble.
“What?” Kara asked, looking in at him and surprised by the noise.
Noah got out of the car and stretched. “I’m having an argument with myself,” he explained.
Byrd rumbled at him again.
“Someone doesn’t like me very much right now.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” Kara snapped and slammed the car door shut.
The growl from Byrd grew louder.
Noah let out a sigh. What was done was done, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it now. Putting the moment of stupidity out of his mind, he turned to look at his home. It looked just the same as it had when he’d left.
Byrd stopped growling at him and glanced around the yard, his curiosity piqued.
“Let’s go see what we can find.” Noah made his way up to his porch with Kara close behind.
“And how do you expect to get in?” Kara sassed at him.
Noah turned to see her. She had stopped on the steps with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Magic,” he chirped, giving her a playful wink.
The surprise on her face delighted Byrd.
Turning back to his front door, Noah studied it for a second. Nothing seemed amiss. The glass storm door was closed tightly, and the door beyond looked secure.
“But you can’t do magic in this form,” Kara said as she got closer.
Noah tilted his head so he could see her out of one eye. “I don’t have to.” Going up to the bare wall next to his door, he stood on his hind legs and grabbed at something unseen. With a quick flick of his head he came down with a string clasped tightly in his teeth. He turned to show off the spare house key he’d hidden in plain sight.
Kara gasped at him. “How?” she asked as he brought the key to her.
“A simple illusion spell,” Noah answered. “There’s a hook up there with a gem holding the spell. Unless you know exactly where it is, you will never see the key hanging there.”
Kara looked at the key. “But what if someone bumps into it?”
“Misdirection.” He looked up at the wall where the key had been. “If you bumped into it, you might feel something akin to spiderwebs on your hand or shoulder.” He looked back at Kara. “Since most people don’t like spiders, they will tend to pull away from that feeling and avoid the place they ran into it.”
“You are a clever man.” Kara held up the key. “But this was entirely unnecessary.” She reached in her pocket and pulled out his regular keys.
Noah’s mouth dropped open as he stared at his keys. “Where did you get those?” He distinctly remembered his keys being tucked in the inner pocket of his tuxedo jacket—a coat that should still be at Raven’s.
“Laurence dropped them off at my office.” Kara pulled open the screen door and fitted the key to the lock.
Noah stood there, processing that thought. What was Laurence doing with my keys? He thought over the large dragon. Laurence was one of the few people Noah trusted. Noah had even told the man about the trick with his spare key in case Noah blew himself up and didn’t make it to work. Again.
Putting together several possibilities, Noah came up with the most likely scenario. Since Daniel had obviously come for him at Raven’s maybe they had gone after his things, too, and then brought them to Kara’s office so he would have them. But something in that didn’t sit right with Noah.
Laurence wouldn’t just drop his keys off without making sure Noah got them. He knew Noah had some delicate things in his basement—spells he’d been working on that were either really dangerous or very fragile. Something about the whole idea made his teeth hurt and put him on edge.
“Kara!” Noah cried out as she turned the knob to open the door. “Wait!”
Kara stopped with the unlatched door in her hand, not yet fully open. “What?”
Noah’s heart raced as he threw himself into the wood, knocking the handle out of her hand. The door banged into the wall as he leaped in, ready to take down some unknown danger. He scanned his living room and found… nothing.
Kara caught the door before it could swing shut. “Noah?” she called in tentatively. “Are you all right?”
Letting out the breath he’d been holding, Noah relaxed, feeling the fool. “Yeah. I just…” He let his words trail off, not knowing how to explain the overwhelming sensation that someone was lurking in his home, ready to hurt them. He shook his head, driving the irrational fear away. “It’s nothing.” For a heartbeat, he wished he could use his magic to check the place out. His aura-finding spell would clearly have told him if anyone were hiding inside. He pushed the wish away and turned to Kara. “Just being paranoid.”
Coming inside, Kara s
hut the door behind her. Her eyes swept across his living room. “This is… nice.”
Noah looked around, trying to see it as she did. His home wasn’t that fancy. It was a simple one-story, brick home in an older neighborhood. The lot it sat on was only three quarters of an acre, but it did have some lovely trees and plenty of outdoor space to work if he needed it. The main reason he’d bought the house was the basement. Uncommon for the area, his basement gave him the room he needed to practice his craft away from the prying eyes of others. It was his safe haven and escape when things got to be too much for him. He shook that thought away and concentrated on his living room.
It was horrible. The carpet was ugly brown shag, and the walls—yellow with age—were in desperate need of repainting. The furniture wasn’t much better. A brown couch with the most offensive flower pattern ever created graced the far end of the room with two matching chairs. A china cabinet filled with knickknacks huddled against one wall, while some sort of flowered picture clung to the other. It wasn’t a room he was proud of, but he never used it anyway.
“Thanks,” he said, leading the way across the living room and into the den. “It came with the house.” He glanced back to see how she took that. Her look of confusion made him smile. “It was already like that when I moved in.”
That made her brow furrow more.
“The house was in foreclosure when I bought it,” he explained. “The couple that lived here were killed in a car wreck, and the bank had repossessed it. I expected their family to come claim some of their stuff, so I left most of the house like it was for the longest time. But no one ever came, and, well, I haven’t felt the need to redecorate.”
“So you just live with their stuff?” Kara asked, sounding slightly appalled.
Noah shrugged. “Not all of it.” Reaching up, he clicked on the light in the den. This was the room he loved. Quite a lot of time had gone into ripping the horrible carpet out and putting in a beautiful laminate floor. He had chosen a dark blue sectional that was comfortable enough to sleep on and an oak coffee table. On the wall opposite the couch was the biggest television he could possibly find. To the right was a fireplace he never used, and to the left was a wall filled with books on just about everything he could think of.
“Now this is nice.”
Noah looked back to see the smile on Kara’s face.
“Who did your curtains?” She went over to the window and rubbed her hand over the taffeta and gauze drapes strung artfully over his back windows.
“What makes you think I didn’t?”
Kara gave him a pointed look that made him laugh.
“One of my ex-girlfriends couldn’t stand the blinds I’d hung up,” he explained. “Complained that it made it look like a bachelor’s pad. So she fixed me up.” He hadn’t seen anything wrong with bare blinds. As long as they kept the glare off his TV, what did it matter?
“Why’d you break up?” Kara moved away from the window towards the bookcase wall. Her fingers drifted over the spines as she read the titles.
“I wouldn’t let her in my basement,” Noah answered. “Come on.” He turned and headed through the door into his kitchen.
Returning the book she had picked up, Kara followed a few steps behind.
Noah paused to look around the kitchen. Someone had been here since he’d left for the gala. He couldn’t see down in the sink, but the dishes he’d left there had been washed and left to dry in the strainer. And from the lack of smell, someone had obviously taken out his trash. He was almost willing to lay money that that same someone had moved the steaks in the refrigerator to the freezer. Only one person could have been responsible for this. Noah searched around until he found what he was looking for. A note.
Pinned to the front of his refrigerator was a single sheet of paper with several scrawling marks and Eternity’s emblem hastily drawn on it. “Laurence has been here.” Noah edged around the kitchen island and headed across the room.
Kara followed closely behind him. “How can you tell?” She glanced around the room.
Noah nodded at the page. “That’s his mark.” It really wasn’t Laurence’s mark. It was a simple protection spell Noah liked to use when they went out into the field, but Laurence had given him shit over it and had scrawled the strange symbol on everything of Noah’s he could get his hands on. After a while, the joke had gotten old, but Laurence would still tag things with the symbol to draw Noah’s attention to them.
Letting out a sigh of relief, Noah turned towards the door in the corner of his kitchen. His feelings hadn’t been wrong. Someone had been there after all. Laurence. But it looked like he was long gone. “Could you help me with this, please?” He stopped next to the closed door.
Coming up next him, Kara reached out and opened the door. A set of steps led down into the darkness of his basement.
“You’ll need to head down first,” Noah explained. “There’s a door at the bottom of the steps, too.”
Kara gave him a surprised glance, then turned her attention to the dark stairs. “You’re going to let me in your basement?”
Noah opened his mouth, surprised that she would even ask, but their conversation from the living room hit him. Of course she would ask. He’d just told her he’d broken up with someone because he wouldn’t let them in his space. Noah cocked his head, amused. “You’re smart enough to know not to touch anything. She wasn’t.” Stepping back, he bowed his head, indicating she should lead. “After you, my lady.”
Giving him a wary look, she headed down the steps.
Noah held the upper door open until she was most of the way down. “I’m going to have to shut this,” he warned. “Just hold on to the banister. The door is right at the bottom of the steps, and seriously, don’t touch anything. Some of that stuff can explode if jostled wrong.”
Kara made some sort of distressed noise, but Noah ignored it and closed the door, dropping the stairs into total darkness. It was important to keep both doors shut tightly when he was working down here. Some of the spells he played with were dangerous, and he had gone to great lengths to keep them contained. But that only worked if the room stayed sealed. Carefully, he picked his way down the familiar path. He heard Kara rattle the handle on the lower door. “Just push it open, there’s a light on the other side,” he called down reassuringly.
“It is open,” she called back through the darkness.
Noah’s heart clenched. It shouldn’t be dark. His orchids were down here! “Shit.” He rushed down the last of the steps. “Just don’t touch anything,” he warned again as he brushed past Kara into the darkened room. This was not the first time the light over his plants had popped the breaker. Using the trickle of light from the back window and memory, he picked his way between tables and into the far corner where the switch box was.
Rearing up, Noah found the box and snagged the latch with his claw. Pride swelled in his chest. He was getting better with those things. It only took a second to find the thrown breaker, but Noah paused before fixing it. Fear clenched around his heart. The switch wasn’t blown. Someone had deliberately turned the lights out.
A male’s deep voice cut through the darkness. “Turn it on.”
Enraged that someone would violate his space, Noah slammed the switch into place. The bank of lights over his plants flickered to life, blinding him, but he turned around ready to hurt the person who had endangered his plants. He’d spent hundreds of hours getting those suckers to bloom, and he was going to take apart the person who dared hurt them.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Noah growled as he came around the end of the last table to face the voice. His heart dropped when he saw the intruder standing just inside the small alcove next to the door. The man was large, but it wasn’t the gun in his hand that made Noah’s heart race. It was the hand he had around Kara’s throat. A growl echoed up from Noah’s chest, pushed by his enraged dragon. The muscles in his back legs bunched as he coiled to attack.
“Stop right there!” the man
yelled.
Noah’s attack froze when the man moved the gun to point at Kara.
“You make one move, and she’s dead.”
Rocking back into a more comfortable position, Noah held his place on the floor, ready for any opportunity.
“Shift!” the man yelled.
“I can’t!” Noah growled.
“He can’t!” Kara snapped at the same time.
The man looked from Noah to Kara. “All dragons can shift!” he insisted. “Tell him to shift!” The hand at Kara’s throat tightened as he pressed the gun to her temple harder.
“Shift!” The word gurgled out of Kara as she clung to the man’s hand, trying to loosen his hold.
“I can’t!” Noah yelled again. He felt the dragon’s energy swirling around him, but he knew it wouldn’t back down enough for him to change to human. Byrd was much too worked up with Kara in danger.
“Just do it!” Kara screamed at him.
The man’s attention bounced back and forth between them as they yelled.
Noah’s pulse raced as he watched the gun drifting away from Kara’s head. Hope welled in his heart. If he could distract the man enough, he might be able to close the gap between them. He held a spell in his mind that he could unleash without words.
“Do it!” Kara yelled.
The man’s head snapped to her, then back to Noah.
As his attention turned, Kara gripped his hand tightly and kicked out. In an amazing feat of flexibility, she got her feet up against the corner of the alcove and shoved with all her might.
Fear raced through Noah’s system as he launched himself towards the pair.
The man stumbled to the side and rammed into a metal table filled with an elaborate array of chemistry equipment. The glass contraption rattled. A single tube slipped from its holder and shattered on the table.
Noah closed his eyes and raced towards them as the chemicals in the tube burst into a ball of blue flame. Time slowed as he counted the seconds left in Kara’s life. At three, he slammed into the unstable pair, knocking them to the ground. At four, the gun in the man’s hand went off, hitting Noah in the chest like a Mack truck, but the bullet skittered off his scales and ricocheted over his shoulder. At five, Noah popped the spell in his mind, sending a wave of energy out into his target. Unfortunately, the man’s hand was still on Kara’s throat. They were both racked with spasms as the energy coursed through them. At six, the glass array Noah had been using to brew up a very volatile potion exploded, peppering his outstretched wings with licks of white-hot flame and splintered glass. The concussion from the blast pressed him down over the pair on the floor and darkened the corners of his vision.
