by Lauren Esker
"No shit, really?" He laughed. "I didn't know they'd take—uh—"
"Marius, if the words 'your kind' cross your lips, I will push you down these stairs. High or not, it's gonna hurt."
This sobered him. "No, I didn't mean—okay, I did mean, but I didn't know how to—" He floundered. "Doesn't the, uh, shifting thing cause a problem? Do your bosses know?"
"Not that it's any of your business, but everyone I work with are shifters. It's called the Special Crimes Bureau. We deal with shifter-related crimes, and why the fuck am I telling you all of this. I'm babbling again. Shit! If you tell the Valeria about the SCB, I'll do a lot more than kick you in the nuts this time, Marius."
He patted her arm. "'sokay, I asked. I won't tell. Wow, you feel good."
"No rubbing, buddy, I'm taken."
"I know. I don't want to steal you or anything. I like Lucado. I'm not going to take his girlfriend."
This time she did kick him, but only in the shin.
"What was that for?"
"For talking about me like a possession."
"I didn't mean it that way," he protested, looking upset.
"I know, but you still deserved that. Now listen, Marius. The federal agent thing is a big secret. If anyone finds out, they'll kill me. So don't tell, okay?"
"No telling. I'm good at secrets. All secrets all the time, in the Valeria ..."
"I bet." She cracked open the door at the top of the stairs and peeked out into the hall. "... Marius, if you don't stop petting my hair, we are going to have a really big problem. Or, I should say, you are."
"It feels good."
"Be that as it may, it is on my head, which is off limits." Oh God, it did feel good though. Everything felt good. The effects weren't as intense as they had been earlier, and adrenaline was doing a pretty effective job of countering her blissed-out feeling, but she would have loved to be able to just lie on the carpet and feel things for a while. Maybe later, she could take a dose in controlled circumstances, preferably with Lucky ... preferably naked ...
Right, that's why it's addictive, dumbass. Control yourself.
Marius was now petting the wall.
"Jesus everloving Christ." She hauled him through the door, stumbled down the corridor to Roxy's door, and banged on it.
The door opened immediately, with one of Roxy's bodyguards looming in the doorway. The only emergency lights on the passenger level were in the hall, not in the rooms, so it was pitch dark behind him.
"We need Roxy," Jen said. "Move."
"I'm here." Roxy emerged from the darkness behind him. "You look like you've been swimming."
"The ship's not sinking, if that's what you're worried about. I think. Listen, I've got a job and it needs more hands than I've got. Remember Angel? Dragon that controls people's minds? He's the reason the engines are out, and he's trying to kill all of us."
"If you're here to prevent panic," Roxy said dryly, "I suggest a change of strategy."
"No, I'm here to make sure all the passengers get some of this." Jen pulled one of the plastic cases out of her bag and held it up. "Because this stops Angel from being able to control us."
Roxy's eyes went wide. "Is that—Dragon's Tears?"
Shit. She was the head of a criminal empire that included a bite-sized chunk of the Pacific Northwest drug trade. The covetous look on her face made Jen nervous. "Yes, but right now it's also the only thing that's going to stop him from making us kill each other. I've experienced it firsthand, Roxy. You won't know he's walking around in your brain until it's too late." She shook the case. Roxy's eyes followed it, mesmerized. "Taking a hit of this is the only way to sweep out anything he might've stashed in the back of your mind. Roxy, are you getting this?"
"Yes—but—" Her gaze snapped back to the case, and the vials of Dragon's Tears dimly visible within. "Do you know how much money you're carrying around there? How many more of those do you have?"
"Enough to do the job." Jen thrust a vial at her. "Drink it."
Roxy pinched it carefully between two fingers. "Are you joking? This is worth—"
"Right now, your life, and no more. Drink it."
"You swear, on your life, that this will actually do what you claim it will?"
"I do," Jen said.
"I've seen him control people," Marius said quietly. "I've felt it. You don't have a chance against him."
Roxy sighed and slugged the contents of the vial.
"Your bodyguards too."
Roxy handed back the vials Jen gave her, pressing them into the hands of her skeptical-looking bodyguards. "Do it." She nodded to the handbag. "How far have you gotten with that?"
"I'm done with the crew but still need to get it to the passengers. On Deck A, I was giving it to people in orange juice, telling 'em it was a seasickness cure."
"Sneaky," Roxy murmured.
"And your problem now." Jen shoved the purse into her hands. "Marius, I'm counting on you to keep her honest. Make sure she gives this to the passengers and doesn't try to steal any."
Marius looked up from studious contemplation of the carpet. "Wait, are you going somewhere?"
"I'm going to find Lucky before he gets himself killed."
She charged out of Roxy's room, and nearly ran headlong into a furious dragon.
"You!" Angel snarled.
"You!" Jen shrieked. She leaped backward and slammed the door. The electronic locks were disengaged, but there was still a deadbolt. She threw it.
It did absolutely nothing, of course. Angel hit the door hard enough to rip the deadbolt off the wall and tear out the top hinge, twisting the door sideways. He clawed through the opening, shoving his massive shoulders inside.
Jen had to hand it to Roxy's bodyguards: even unarmed and faced with a charging dragon, they weren't cowards. One of them picked up the coffee table, muscles bulging under his tropical shirt, and slammed it into Angel's face, while the other herded his boss toward one of the bedrooms.
"Not in there!" Jen snapped. "You'll be trapped, and you've seen how easily he gets through doors." She drew the gun Lucia had given her, but hesitated to use it. She'd used up most of her ammo on Angel in the atrium, and it didn't seem to do much to him as a dragon anyway. If she could get him to shift human again, she might have a chance.
"Where, then?" Roxy demanded.
Jen could only think of one possibility. She pointed to the rain-lashed glass doors leading out to the balcony.
Roxy caught herself on the wall as the floor tilted like a carnival ride. "There's a hurricane out there!"
"And there's a dragon in here!" Jen shouted, backing toward the balcony with Marius at her shoulder. He, at least, wasn't arguing.
Roxy's bodyguard got in two good blows with the coffee table, each one knocking Angel's massive blue-and-white head against the wall, before Angel got his front legs inside and swatted the bodyguard with one paw. His claws ripped through shirt, muscle, and bone. The man was obviously dead before the second blow.
That definitely got everyone moving, stumbling toward the balcony across the heaving floor. Marius wrenched open the balcony doors, and rain and wind slashed inside. As the ship tilted on the next wave, unsecured objects—books, pencils, drinking glasses—that had been rolling around the floor bounded out the door to clatter against the Plexiglass barricade that served as a railing. Lighter and more aerodynamic items bounced over it and vanished into the darkness of the storm.
The body of Roxy's dead henchman slid gruesomely across the carpet and then, as the deck tilted back, flopped the other way. Angel leaped over it, leaving bloody footprints. He snagged Roxy by the dangling leather purse with his gory claws, dragging her off her feet.
Her one remaining bodyguard started beating him with a chair, to no visible effect. Jen fired her last remaining bullets at his head. One shot missed and the other glanced off his scales. She dropped the gun and reached for the nearest thing to hand, a heavy-looking vase. It was a feeble weapon against something Angel's size, but at le
ast it made her feel like she wasn't completely unarmed.
The purse strap snapped all on its own, and Roxy nearly tumbled out the open door and over the balcony; Marius caught her. Angel dropped the purse and stepped on it, then drew his foot back. "What is this?" He picked it up with his claws and sniffed at it. His lips curled back. "You. All of you. You all smell like it. Is that how you're doing it?"
He flung the purse through the open balcony doors with considerable strength. It skipped off the Plexiglass railing and sailed into the night.
Which might be a harbinger of what was about to happen to all of them. Roxy and Marius were out on the balcony now, with Roxy's bodyguard blocking the doorway. Jen, however, had managed to get herself separated from them, and was now trapped against the wall with Angel's massive bulk between her and any hope of escape through either balcony or front door. The vase in her hands seemed like the flimsiest possible weapon against Angel's huge jaws.
"Feeble little creature," Angel growled. "You really think you're a match for me—"
He took a step forward, and his foot came down on one of the many unsecured items rolling around on the floor: a wine bottle from the rack beside the minibar.
His foot shot out from under him. The amazed look on his face was priceless. Jen threw the vase at his head and dashed around him, thinking as she did so, That had to be Lucky. That's a Lucky thing.
Marius and Roxy caught her and pulled her out onto the balcony, where she was instantly soaked, while the bodyguard slammed the balcony door shut. Not that glass was going to do anything against Angel, if the room door had barely slowed him down.
"I hope you have a plan!" Marius shouted over the wind and rain, steadying her.
The floor-to-ceiling privacy walls that divided the ship's balconies into compartments provided some protection from the elements, but also stopped them from going anywhere. Those walls were the entire reason Jen had decided it would be easier to sneak around from an inside room.
"We're going to have to climb onto the next balcony," she shouted back, with more confidence than she felt.
"Are you crazy?" Roxy screamed.
The glass doors shattered, and suddenly the balcony was mostly full of writhing, wet dragon. One of his massive clawed paws pinned Jen against the Plexiglass barrier, bending her torso over it. Her wet hair slapped her face as the wind tore at her.
"You know," Angel said, looking down at her with rain dripping off his jaws, "it's almost tempting to stand back and watch you try. For amusement's sake, if nothing else."
He pushed harder. She could barely breathe; the Plexiglass groaned under her.
Marius appeared in her field of view, tearing at Angel's implacable claws with his bare hands. "Son of a bitch, let her go!"
"Marius, don't," Jen gasped. "Get out while he's busy with me."
"Oh, I think it's far too late for that," Angel said cheerfully. He flicked Marius over the railing with a slap of his other paw.
Jen didn't have an arm free to grab for him. Everything seemed to happen in an instant: a flurry of Marius's flailing arms and legs, the wind seizing him—
—and a green and black blur streaked past Angel's shoulder; scaly arms caught him and yanked him back inside.
"Sorry," Lucky said.
With Angel's attention momentarily distracted, Jen shifted.
***
Lucky had skidded into the hallway on Deck C to find the door of Roxy's room twisted halfway off its hinges, swinging as the ship rolled on the waves.
"Tell me what to do to help," Onyeka said.
"You can't—" he began, and then he thought of something. "No, wait. Go downstairs and get my sister. She's in the engine room, on the deck below the cargo hold. She's a dragon too. She'll help us against Angel. "
To her credit, Onyeka didn't bat an eye at the probably unwelcome news that there were more dragons on the ship. She merely nodded and dashed off.
Lucky lunged through the ruined doorway. The room was a disaster area, lit only by the emergency lights from the hallway and flashes of lightning.
Most of his view of the balcony was blocked by Angel's coils, but he saw just enough of what was happening to react without thinking. He shifted long and skinny, gliding between Angel's shoulder and the shattered frame of the balcony door, and sank his claws into Marius just as the man toppled off the balcony. Lucky flung himself backward and yanked them both into the room.
"Sorry," he gasped, releasing Marius with fresh blood streaking his claws. It hadn't been a gentle rescue.
"I'm not complaining," Marius got out as he staggered against the wall. "Jennifer—he's got Jen."
Angel roared and whipped around. Lucky had a terrible moment when he glimpsed the ragged remains of a red jacket, like the one Jen had been wearing, dangling from Angel's claws. Then Jen reappeared human-shaped and naked near the wall. "No he doesn't," she said triumphantly.
At that moment, the lights blinked back on.
For an instant everyone was half-blinded by the sudden brilliance. And Angel was the one who moved. With a high, inhuman shriek of frustration, he lashed out with one hand, predator-fast, shifting as he struck: his claws lengthened like rapiers, and skewered Jen through the chest.
In an arc of blood, she fell.
Lucky screamed. There were no words in it; there was no human thought. There was only rage. In that instant, he was all predator, and all dragon.
He leaped for his cousin's throat.
Angel wasn't prepared the savagery of his attack. The bigger dragon was put on the defensive, scrambling back as Lucky slashed and clawed him wildly. Self-preservation was no longer a consideration.
"There's nothing you have I can't take," Angel snarled.
Lucky only screamed again, a predator's hunting cry, and went for his eyes.
Tangled together, the two combatants rolled onto the balcony. Rain and wind slammed into them, but they didn't slow; momentum and the heaving deck carried them over the railing in a free-fall plunge, slashing and biting at each other, toward the water far below.
Chapter Seventeen
Angel grew wings as they fell, but Lucky hung on, digging his claws into the bigger dragon's sides and belly. Angel was unable to support their combined weight, and for the second time in as many days, Lucky was knocked semiconscious by the slap of hitting water that felt as hard as concrete.
The impact knocked them apart, and the shocking embrace of cool water revived Lucky. He rolled and lunged, not even bothering to take the time to shift to a water shape before he sank his teeth into Angel's leg. Angel screamed, beating his wet wings frantically as Lucky's weight dragged him down into the dark water.
He shifted and so did Lucky, their entwined bodies growing slim and sleek, losing wings and spikes and rear legs as they streamlined for the water. Lucky tasted Angel's blood mingled with the first rush of salt water over his gills. His jaws ground through sinew and muscle, sinking into bone. Angel's shriek rippled across Lucky's newly pressure-sensitive sides, vibrating his entire body.
Here below the turbulent surface, the water was calm except for the storm they brought with them. With gravity no longer a consideration, they spun and twisted. Angel bit and clawed at the smaller dragon whose jaws were locked on him, but Lucky corkscrewed his sinuous length, managing to keep most of himself out of Angel's reach. Still, each blow that landed sapped his strength.
There was no way to measure time down here. There was hardly even any pain, whether it was the chill of the water that numbed it, or the adrenaline flooding them both. They thrashed together in an embrace of death. Ropes of blood from both their bodies swirled around them, twining like a dancer's ribbons.
Caught up in their life-or-death struggle, Lucky didn't recognize at first what was happening when the calm water around them began to roil.
***
Jen floated in a haze of pain. All the air had been punched out of her lungs and she couldn't seem to get it back. Dimly she was aware of footsteps, quick and
light; of Lucia's voice saying, "Did Angel do this?"
"The drug," Marius said, his voice desperate. "It can help heal people, right? It's in her system—"
"It can't heal something like this," Lucia said. "Besides, she's burned through most of what she ingested. It doesn't last that long."
"Then give her more—"
"There is no more. It's all gone."
"Not all of it." Whatever she was lying on suddenly shifted under her, and Jen realized that her head and shoulders had been in Marius's lap when he offloaded her to the floor. She couldn't do anything about it. Her limbs were cold and leaden. "There's some in my room. Not a lot, but—I'll get it. It might help."
"Don't," Lucia said. "Stay." There was a soft rustling as she knelt beside Jen. "Are you forgetting you have the source of the drug right here?"
Hesitation; then Jen was dimly aware that he was propping her up again, because she could see Lucia bending toward her with an intent look. The light was too bright for her dark-adapted eyes; she had to squint against it.
"You said," Marius began. His tone was hesitant, a man grasping at straws, unwilling to have even a fragile thread of hope withdrawn. "You said the drug couldn't heal her."
"The drug is a stable version, heavily adulterated. It took me a long time to develop a version that had a shelf life and would still work after being stored for months." Lucia closed her eyes; when she opened them again, they were wet. She touched her fingertips to her damp lashes. "It's nothing, nothing at all compared to what the original can do."
Her wet fingertips brushed Jen's sternum. Jen gave a choking gasp. It was not unlike the feeling of Angel rummaging around in her brain, but more insidious, and physical as well as mental. It felt like tendrils, cool and spiky, crawling into her body through every pore. She squirmed weakly, trying to get away from it.
"Hold her still," Lucia said absently. She brushed her hand below her eyes again, this time leaving red streaks like war paint.
Blood, Jen thought, dazed. My blood.
"Shhhh." Marius wrapped an arm across her naked chest above the injuries, holding her in place. He was strong, or maybe it was only that she was so impossibly weak. "Jen, relax. She's helping you."
