Flight of Dragons

by Elianne Adams, Sadie Haller, Zoe York, Shelley Munro, Zara Keane, LC Alleyne, Skye Jones, Evanne Lorraine, Ann Gimpel

  Seth prepares our coffees. He has impossibly long fingers. Fingers that once made my skin burn with pleasure. In different circumstances, I might enjoy an erotic trip down memory lane. Right now, I just want to throttle him.

  My heart jumps when I feel the mobile phone in my back pocket buzz. Darting a glance at Seth, I pull it from my jeans and glance at the display. The message glows with words so bizarre I have to read them twice.

  The dragon stirs. Tell MacNeil.

  What the fuck does that mean? Is it a clue to a place name? To a person? I search my mind for connections but draw a blank. I’m not telling Seth anything until I’ve had the chance to explain the situation to him. I’m not even sure which MacNeil Adrian wants me to tell.

  Meanwhile, the machine whirs and glugs. I glance at my watch. Yet more precious seconds wasted. Can he go any slower?

  Seth dumps two heaped spoonfuls of sugar into one cup and hands the one without sugar to me. Does he remember I like my coffee black? Or is it carelessness? I take a sip. Under normal circumstances, I love a good coffee, but tonight the bitter black liquid reignites my nausea.

  “So,” he says, sitting at his desk. “Talk.”

  My throat constricts. “Ash is missing.”

  He leans back in his chair, fingers flexed. “Your little sister? She’s, what, fifteen, by now?”

  “Fourteen.” My vocal chords are creaky, my voice raw. Ash has his eyes. Green with thick, dark lashes. Tell him the truth, Lia. Quick, brutal, like ripping off wax strips.

  A crease mars his otherwise smooth forehead. “When you say missing, what do you mean? Has she run away?”

  “She’s been kidnapped.”

  Seth shoots out of his chair, sending his coffee flying. “Kidnapped? What the fuck? Why are you talking to me and not the cops?”

  “No cops.” I hear the hint of hysteria in my voice. “That’s the deal.”

  “Deal? Do you know who’s taken her?” Seth is pacing now. Long, menacing strides, as threatening as the wolf on his family crest.

  White-knuckled, my grip on the cup tightens. “Adrian Langley.”

  He stops pacing and his hard gaze pins me in place. “Langley? Is this some kind of joke?”

  “You think I’d joke about my—” I choke on the inhale, then clear my throat. “You think I’d joke about Ash being kidnapped?”

  “I don’t know, Lia. Back when I knew you, you acted like life was one long party.”

  “That was fifteen years ago. I grew up.”

  “You certainly did.” His eyes rake over my worn T-shirt, faded denim jeans, and scuffed boots. It feels like a visual strip search. And if the neutral expression on his face is anything to go by, he’s not impressed by what he sees.

  Warmth creeps up my cheeks again. Why do I care what Seth thinks of my appearance? On the rare occasions I make the effort, I scrub up well enough, but I’m no rival for Blondie in the club. Seth, in contrast, has transformed from a gangly youth into a strapping man. A strapping man who wears the uniform representing everything I hold in contempt.

  He resumes his pacing. “Tell me everything.”

  Tell him everything. I hiccup on a hysterical laugh. I’ve gone to great lengths to conceal the truth of Ash’s paternity. And with good reason. As a true blood MacNeil born to an outsider, she’d have been taken away from me at birth and raised in the Fifty. They’d have indoctrinated her in their nationalistic, misogynistic beliefs, and made certain she received the bare minimum of an education. If only there was some way I could persuade Seth to help me without revealing the truth….

  My fingers are shaking so much that coffee sloshes out of my cup. “When I got home from work, Ash was missing. I was inclined to think she’d taken off in a teenage huff when the phone rang.”

  “You have a license to have a home telephone?” His expression is one of bemusement.

  “Whether or not I have a telephone license is irrelevant.”

  He flashes me a sardonic grin. “Not to the Fianna.”

  “Screw the Fianna and their stupid laws. Fact is, Langley phoned and told me he’d kidnapped Ash. I have forty-eight hours—less now—to bring you to him for an exchange. Will you help me?”

  “Not so fast. Something about this scenario doesn’t smell right. Langley’s scum, but I wouldn’t have pegged him as the type to target schoolgirls. Surely he could come up with another ploy to lure me to his lair.”

  “He’s holding her hostage as a political statement. I don’t think his motive is sexual.” The words ring hollow, reflecting my doubts. The thought of Adrian touching Ash turns my blood to ice. Ever since the phone call, I’ve been worrying about his motives. The Adrian I’d known as a teenager was no pervert, but the Adrian I’d known was no revolutionary. People change. How far is he willing to go to hurt his enemies?

  “Why choose your sister?” Seth has stopped pacing and is rifling through his desk drawers. “Why not a girl from an influential Fianna family?”

  Here goes. I send a quick prayer to a power I no longer believe in. “She is a girl from an influential Fianna family. She’s your daughter.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SETH

  Lia’s words turn my core to ice. I jerk my head up to face her. “What the fuck? Ashling is your sister. If she weren’t, the DNA registry would have picked up on that.”

  She stares back at me with shadow-ringed blue eyes. “Adrian helped me to hack into the system and falsify her birth registration details. That’s why he knows about your…connection…to Ash.”

  “Connection? Is that what you call it?” My fingers tense around the gun in my desk drawer. I pull it out and slam it on my desk. She flinches and takes a step back, her eyes widening at the sight of the firearm.

  I pull a box of ammo out of the drawer and slap it down beside the gun. “Lucky for you, it’s not loaded. Yet.”

  “Calm down, Seth. I can explain—”

  “Explain what?” I growl. “That you lied to me? That you falsified legal documents to support that lie? Or that you kept lying for fifteen fucking years? It’s bad enough that you and Langley betrayed me when the war broke out—”

  “We did not betray you. We simply chose the other side. Adrian and I had nothing to do with your arrest.”

  My fingers curl into fists. All these years later, the pain of my best friend and my girlfriend selling me out to a bunch of crazed revolutionaries still brings forth a burning rage. “Even if Ashling is your daughter, how do I know Langley isn’t her father? You were such great pals after all.”

  She blinks and the action draws attention to her inky lashes. “Me and Adrian? We were never more than friends. You were the one I loved.”

  Love…hearing the word from her treacherous lips makes my blood boil.

  “Ash turned fourteen in April. Do the math. She’s definitely your daughter.”

  I crack my knuckles against the edge of the desk, relishing the pain. “I don’t know what to believe. What I do know is that you either lied to me all those years ago, or you’re lying to me now.”

  “If I lied all those years ago, it was by omission. I chose not to tell you I was pregnant.”

  “Semantics, Lia. If you were expecting my child, you should have fucking informed me. Didn’t I have a right to know?”

  “What about my rights? If I’d told you Ashling was your daughter, your family would have insisted she be taken away from me and raised in the Fifty.”

  “Damn right. I don’t want my kid growing up in a ghetto.”

  She places her hands on her hips and tilts her cute little chin. “The only reason that the North Side is a ghetto is because the Fianna destroyed it.”

  “War has bitter consequences,” I say, repeating the words I’ve uttered so often over the past five years that they come automatically, “and you’re deflecting. I could have given Ashling a comfortable upbringing in a safe environment. I could have taken care of you, too.”

  “Oh, I know all about the Fianna’s method of tak
ing care of people,” she bites out. “You did a fabulous job of taking care of my parents. Your uncle threw them into a prison cell and left them to rot.”

  “Your parents’ actions left my uncle no choice.” I don’t tell her I begged my uncle to spare her mother. I don’t mention the whipping Torin gave me for contradicting him during a Fianna meeting. This is neither the time nor the place for that discussion.

  “All my parents did was repair a couple of cars belonging to people the Fianna don’t like. The garage was on the verge of going bust and they needed the money.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your family, Lia,” I say roughly, “but you’re changing the subject. What did I ever do to you that made you falsify our daughter’s birth registration? Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?”

  “Because you were totally enthralled by your uncle and his mission. You couldn’t see the dangers in the political message he preached.”

  “All the Fianna wanted was to free the provinces from the Druids,” I say. “Surely that was a good thing?”

  “All the Fianna wanted was to harness the Druids’ magic for their own purposes. And since they’ve been in power, they’ve crushed any and all opposition and curtailed the people’s freedoms.”

  She’s not saying anything I haven’t thought myself countless times, but I swore an oath of fealty to my uncle and my word means a great deal to me. And I do believe my uncle means well. Unfortunately, decades of war and rebellion have rendered him paranoid and apt to go overboard with surveillance and security measures.

  “The Fianna want what’s best for the Provinces. Do you want to go back to the time of the Druids? They kept the population obedient through mind control. You might balk at the physical restrictions the Fianna enforce, but we have never tried to control what you think.”

  Lia gives a derisive snort. “What good is freedom of thought if it doesn’t come with the freedom to act upon those thoughts?”

  She crosses her arms under her pert little breasts, drawing my attention to them. Crazy as it sounds, this conversation is making me hard. My uncle says few things in life can’t be solved by a fistfight or a good fuck. It’s crude but the man has a point. Right now, I want to ram myself into Lia. I want her at my mercy, begging me not to stop until she comes. And from the pheromones my enhanced senses are picking up from her, she wants it too. I step out from behind the desk and close the space between us.

  She trembles when I touch her but she doesn’t tell me to stop. I run a finger down her cheek, tracing the elegant line of her jaw. Her breathing deepens and I sense her excitement. “Is Ashling truly my daughter?” I murmur against her ear. “The truth now.”

  “Yes,” she whispers. “She is your daughter.”

  I can feel the erratic rhythm of her heart beating against my chest, sense the mix of fear and excitement emanating from her. It draws me to her with magnetic force. After a millisecond of hesitation, I lower my mouth to hers.

  A fist bangs on my apartment door.

  I drag myself back from Lia. We stare at one another for a long moment, both breathing heavily.

  “Come in,” I call over my shoulder but I don’t take my eyes from her. I can’t. It’s as if she has me transfixed.

  The door to my apartment bursts open. A burly man dressed in the black-and-silver Fianna uniform stands on the threshold.

  “What’s up, Driscoll?”

  My lieutenant’s gaze shifts from me to Lia and back again. “A word, sir.”

  “Talk.” My tone is brusque and I feel a pang of guilt for snapping at him. It’s not Driscoll’s fault I’ve got a raging hard-on.

  “A bombing on the docks. Four confirmed dead, several injured.” Driscoll pauses. “Eoin is among the injured.”

  I suck air through my teeth. “This is Langley’s doing. Him and his fucking mercenaries.”

  “They prefer to call themselves revolutionaries.” Lia’s voice is soft and soothing, but the words flail me like a barbed whip.

  “Revolutionaries my arse. He has a few fellow anarchists in his flock, and the rest are hired help.” I pin her in place with a glare powerful enough to make her squirm. “You show up out of the blue with a crazy story about Ashling and Langley. Then a bomb goes off.” I cup her chin and draw her close. I can smell coffee on her breath and the scent of her shampoo—something cheap and functional. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  Her eyes widen in a convincing display of incredulity. “Surely you don’t think I’m in league with Adrian?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Strangely enough, neither your version of patriarchal oppression nor his appeals to me,” she says roughly. “My only concern is rescuing Ash.”

  I give her a slow, measured look, and let her go. I turn to Driscoll. “Does my uncle know?”

  “Yeah. He’s already called his soldiers.”

  “Fuck.” I rub the back of my neck. Tor is going to blow a fuse over this. “Call a meeting. Round Room in twenty. When we react, I want our response to be informed and considered. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m on it.” Driscoll lumbers out of the room without another word.

  “‘Informed’ and ‘considered’?” Lia’s mouth curls in disgust. “I thought Torin MacNeil’s M.O. was ‘Kill first, ask questions later.’ Why else employ Shadow Warriors as guards?”

  Rage burns a path from my stomach to my scalp. I move toward her and grab her throat. The electricity from my fingers sparks against her slim neck and makes her flinch in pain. “If I find out you had anything to do with the attack, the slaughter—” I draw a slow, sensuous finger across her neck, my touch as tender as a lover’s caress, “—I’ll slit your throat.”

  “I had nothing to do with the bombing.” Lia’s voice is more a croak than a whisper. “I swear it.”

  A prickling heat spreads over my limbs and my heart skips a beat. I stare at my fingertips. They’re emitting sparks. I close my eyes, focus my energy, and let my enhanced senses do their work. My eyes fly open. “Oh, fuck.”

  Lia is still as a statue, her face leeched of color. “What’s wrong, Seth?”

  “Get down,” I growl. “Get down now.”

  I shove her to the floor, my heavy body crushing hers.

  In that instant, a blast rips through the building.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LIA

  The first sensation I register is pain. The second is pressure. The pain is from my side and the pressure…the pressure is Seth. He’s lying on top of me, pinning me to the ground. His arms are curled protectively around my head. With his chest crushed against mine, I can feel the rapid beats of his heart against my breasts. His hot breath warms my neck, and his spicy scent makes my heart rate match his, beat for racing beat.

  For a few seconds, we remain in our awkward embrace—dazed, frozen, incredulous. Thoughts gallop through my mind in a drunken kaleidoscope, finally coalescing into a single image: Ash.

  Raw terror claws at my stomach. I shove upward and gasp at the pain in my side. “We have to get out of here. I have to find Ash.”

  He pushes himself to his elbows and scrambles to his feet. For the second time that evening, he hauls me to a standing position. We’re both panting and disheveled. His dark hair sticks up in spikes, and his face is a tableau of horror. Only his eyes remain mobile. They dart around the room. Mine follow suit, assessing the damage and searching for a way to escape.

  The apartment is in better shape than I expect after an explosion of that magnitude. The bookshelves collapsed during the blast, spilling books all over the desk and floor. Our coffee cups are lying on the ground, one smashed, the other whole, both seeping black liquid over white tiles.

  I suck in a breath at the sight of the buckled walls and ceiling. The door, the obvious escape route, bulges in a grotesque parody of the relief sculptures on the cathedral doors.

  “Fuck me,” Seth says and rubs a hand across his darkly stubbled jaw. “What sort of substanc
e can buckle Maegar metal? It’s supposed to be indestructible.”

  My lips form words, but before I can utter them, the ceiling gives an ominous groan, followed by a screeching sound reminiscent of metal sparking against metal. Plaster flakes down on us in dusty clumps. My heart leaps in my chest, and then churns out a few sluggish beats.

  “Get your stuff.” Seth vaults over his desk. He grabs his jacket, the gun, and some ammo.

  I snatch my raincoat from the sofa and tie it around my waist. With my sore ribs, I’ll lose valuable time if I try to struggle into it. “Hope you got a Plan B,” I say, indicating the wrecked door. “Cause that exit’s a bust.”

  “I always have a Plan B.” He grabs my arm and pulls me toward the tapestry on the wall. He shoves the material aside, exposing a door with a small code box.

  The ceiling groans again. Cold sweat beads on my forehead. “Hurry up, for fuck’s sake.”

  “I am hurrying.” Seth taps in some numbers, and the door opens to reveal a dark passageway. He yanks me inside, and the door slides shut.

  Smoke curls along the passageway, stinging my eyes and making my nose and throat itch. I blink furiously and cough into the back of my hand.

  Seth shoves me to my knees. “Crawl. Get lower than the smoke.”

  I obey, wincing with every forward shuffle. My side aches, and I’m having a hard time staying conscious.

  He follows close behind. His flashlight shines through the smoky darkness. There is nothing to see except thick swirls of smoke, coiling around us like a hangman’s noose.

  Unlike Seth’s apartment, the passageway isn’t soundproof. The fire upstairs hisses and crackles, but I hear no screams. Fear snakes down my spine. May the old gods help those poor people.

  “Faster,” Seth wheezes. “Need to go faster.”

  I increase my speed and wince when each movement brings a fresh jolt of agony.

  After we’ve crawled for what seems like a kilometer but can only have been a few meters, the smoke grows thicker. It has an odd smell. Sort of sickly sweet. A warning nags at my brain. There is something about that smell…I feel woozy and my head slumps as if it’s too heavy for my neck to support.