Dragon Heat

by Allyson James

"What happened?" he asked, pitching his voice to soothe.

  Grizelda quieted, but the fear did not leave her eyes. Caleb slowly removed his hand from her mouth, and she drew a long breath.

  "Donna is practicing black magic." Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

  Caleb could not quite read her mind, but he felt the terror pouring from her and disgust and dismay. Anger stirred in him. As with Saba, he couldn't put his mark on Grizelda to help her heal because she wielded his true name, but he could help her using more mundane means.

  "You are safe now," Caleb said. "Saba is waiting just down the street, in a taxi. She will take you to safety."

  Grizelda hesitated a moment, then she nodded. Caleb touched her face, feeling sorry for her even though she'd helped summon and bind him.

  "Donna says she just wants to help Lisa," she whispered. "But how can she with dark magic and demons? It's all wrong."

  "Demons?" he repeated sharply old anger rising.

  "Incubus. They're horrible."

  Caleb's anger turned dangerous. Demons were unwelcome anywhere, but they oozed their way into Dragonspace and the Earth world from the pits of hell to wreak havoc as they wished. Too many people believed in them, allowing them to manifest, usually as attractive creatures to seduce their summoners before they understood the danger.

  Demons were no match for the might of a dragon, although enough of them could do much damage, even to a dragon, as Caleb had personally experienced. He hated demons, evil vermin who had been the cause of the greatest sorrow of his past.

  "What is she doing with these demons?" he asked Grizelda.

  The young woman shuddered. "Foul and filthy things. How can she?"

  "She probably wants to enhance her own power. Demons have much magic in their own nauseating way."

  "I don't want anything to do with that. I only do white magic, good magic." Grizelda seized one of the amulets around her neck. "The Goddess protects me."

  "You are smarter than Donna." Caleb rose to his feet. "Witches can be consumed by their own power if they aren't careful. Stick to dancing under the moon, or whatever it is you do."

  Grizelda sniffled and wiped her eyes, smudging them with eyeliner. "You're not so bad, for a dragon."

  "Goldens are the best of all dragons."

  "But you're full of yourself."

  He smiled slightly. "Lisa says that. Go now and tell Saba what you told me. I'm going to have a peek at Donna."

  Grizelda bit her lip. "Be careful."

  "I'll think about it." He strode away, his dark raincoat swirling. He heard Grizelda scramble to her feet and the click of her too-high heels as she hurried toward the street and the waiting taxi.

  Caleb climbed an almost vertical alley to an obscure street and a normal enough looking house with a neat yard. A whiff of Donna's magic came to him before he even reached the house, and he nearly gagged on its foulness. It drifted through the air in dark strands, visible to other magical beings. Saba and Grizelda, and he added reluctantly Malcolm, were right not to trust her. Donna was working dark magic no dragon would stoop to.

  He also smelled the demons. One came at him as he slipped into the shadows behind the house, a tall, white-haired incubus, white skin shimmering in the darkness. Caleb slowed. In Dragonspace Caleb could flame demons to instant ash, but here he'd have to fight.

  The demon sprang. The thing was laughing, sure of its power, triumphant that at last he could best a dragon. But though Caleb did not have all his dragon powers, he still had much of his dragon strength. He caught the demon as it leapt, spun the white body around, and in a lightning-swift move, broke its neck. The incubus slid to the ground without a sound.

  Caleb shot a glance at the calm house and slipped back into the shadows, leaving the body in the driveway. There were wards around the doorways of the house, but none on the basement window. Either Donna was careless, which he didn't truly believe, or she'd left the one crack so the demons could get in and out.

  That's why he didn't trust witch magic, Caleb thought as he peered through the window. They needed physical things—sketched runes, crystals, candles—for protections, instead of simply casting the aura of their thoughts like dragons did. But then again, witch magic had captured him and allowed him to come here, so he had to grudgingly concede that it worked.

  Donna rolled on the floor of the basement with another incubus; he was impaling her as she screamed in ecstasy. Caleb made a noise of revulsion. Demon magic was foul, and Donna was busily pulling it into herself. He saw the sickly white glow move from the demon's body to hers and her ecstasy grow as it did.

  He'd seen enough. Donna did not have the orb or she'd be using it. She was trying to fortify herself with demon magic, which told Caleb clearer than words that she was evil, despite her facade of the helpful, motherlike witch who only wanted the best for everyone.

  If he could have killed her now and gotten her out of the way, he would have, but the spell that enslaved him would not let him. That didn't mean, he thought with some satisfaction, that others couldn't do the deed for him.

  He turned away from the window and left the house. In the driveway, the demon's dead body had decomposed to ash and a foul green ooze. Holding his breath, Caleb stepped over it and made for the alley that would take him back to the taxi.

  Lisa lay awake for hours that night contemplating all Caleb had told her after he'd returned from seeing Saba, and wishing he hadn't departed again. Caleb had turned up near midnight, telling her he'd found Saba but that she knew nothing. And by the way, Saba was now in thrall to Malcolm the black dragon, she had healed him, and Donna was having sex with incubi in her basement to stoke up her own magic.

  Caleb then told her he had to go back to Dragonspace for a time; why, he wouldn't say.

  He'd stripped off his clothes and kissed her good-bye, but when she asked questions, he touched her mouth, stopping her words. "Do not leave the apartment until I return, and let no one in—except Mrs. Bradley. She's the only harmless person in this city. Don't talk to Donna whether she calls on the phone or comes here, and don't let her in. Same goes for Saba—who knows what the black dragon will make her do?"

  "Caleb…"

  "I'll be back as soon as I can." He kissed her again, his eyes darkening, and he let her go with reluctance.

  He walked into the spare bedroom, his perfect body moving with grace. Lisa raised her hand to him just as he slid the armband from his elbow and tossed it to her.

  "Keep that for me."

  She caught it. There was a flash of gold, a hint of wing, and suddenly, fifty feet of dragon filled the space behind the doorway.

  Caleb watched with his dragon eyes as Lisa reached in and touched his scales, marveling at how warm and soft they felt, his powerful muscles beneath. Now that she'd seen him as a man, she realized that there was nothing strange about him shifting back to his dragon shape—it was simply another aspect of him, Caleb of the glowing blue dragon eyes and sexy smile.

  "What did Malcolm mean today when he asked if you remembered what they did to… Severin, did he say?" she asked. "Who was Severin?"

  Caleb's eyes took on a look of vast sadness she'd glimpsed in him before.

  "Severin was my son," he said, his voice quiet. "But that is a story for another time. I want to return before your night is through." He narrowed his eyes to slits, fixing them on her. "Don't leave the apartment."

  "I won't. Hurry," she added softly.

  Caleb's mouth rippled into his usual grin. "I will fly on swift wing."

  He turned, his golden body filling the doorway, a black mist beyond seeming to stretch to eternity. Caleb took one step into it, then plunged suddenly downward.

  "Shit!" she heard him shout.

  She leaned as far into the doorway as she dared. "Caleb! What happened?"

  "I fell off the ledge," he snarled.

  Lisa started to laugh. There was a great heated updraft, a leathery swish of wings, and Caleb rose, a golden flash against the black
. Then the mist coalesced, growing lighter and lighter, and suddenly, she looked into the empty spare bedroom, which smelled musty with disuse, and Caleb was gone.

  Now Lisa lay awake in bed, starting at every tiny noise in the apartment. Donna consorting with demons, the black dragon enslaving the one witch who'd helped Caleb.

  She thought about how Ming Ue had known right away that Caleb was a dragon, and how she'd gone quiet with awe when Caleb told her a black dragon was wandering around San Francisco. Ming Ue had magic, too, and so did stolid Shaiming. Lisa wondered briefly if her skeptical friend Carol also had magic but didn't know it or believe it.

  Then there was this power in herself that Lisa could not control. She remembered how the power had nearly consumed her when she'd raised her hand to throw magic at Malcolm. She'd known instinctively what to do, but afterward she'd been weak and sick and had no idea how she'd summoned the power. Caleb was as astonished by her power as she was; he hadn't known anything about it, either.

  Lisa's entire world had turned upside down in the last few days, as soon as Caleb had become human. His name jingled musically in her head, though she knew that Caleb was not his true name, but one that sounded human. The thought of his hard, naked body made her squirm with warmth. From the twinkle in his blue eyes, she knew he'd noticed her noticing him all day, and he liked it.

  The wind chimes in the living room tinkled faintly as they did sometimes when the oscillating fan wafted air to them. Caleb had admonished her to keep the windows closed even though it was stifling, so she'd turned on all the fans in the house to move the air around.

  To the faint jingle and the shushing sounds of the fans she at last drifted to sleep to dream of wandering a dark and trash-strewn alley somewhere in the city, She knew she was still in San Francisco because she could smell the salt water of the bay and see the lights of the Bay Bridge looming above the buildings. A man stood silhouetted not far from her, tall and well-shaped, and her heart leapt.

  "Caleb?"

  "If you want me to be."

  Caleb's deep voice rolled out of the darkness and the man stepped into the light. He was naked, with Caleb's golden skin and mane of unruly hair and cocky grin. His eyes, though, instead of being lapis blue were black.

  "You are dreaming of me, Lisa-ling. I like that."

  "Am I dreaming?"

  "Of course. In dreams you can do whatever you want. You know what you want to do."

  Lisa's lock of white hair tingled at her scalp. "What do I want to do?"

  "Touch me." He came closer. He had Caleb's scent of maleness and his knowing smile. "You want to touch my body and enjoy it. You wonder what it would be like to have sex with a man who is a dragon, a wild and magical beast. It would be good, Lisa-ling. I promise you."

  Her hand rose of its own accord, fingers resting on the man's shoulder. The play of muscle beneath was real enough and she traced the cords of his biceps.

  "Touch me," he whispered. "All of me."

  Lisa let her fingers drift down his chest, golden hair catching on her fingertips. She moved her touch across the hard ridges of his abdomen.

  "Submit to me," he said. "I'll make it hurt good."

  Lisa's mind felt heavy, her thoughts in a fog. She pulled her fingers away.

  "Caleb would not want to hurt me."

  "Caleb is a dragon. He doesn't know how to be gentle. I'll teach you to like it hard, so you'll be prepared for him."

  "He would be gentle for me," Lisa said stubbornly, trying to shake the fog from her head. Wisps of mist wrapped her arms like ropes.

  "He won't know how not to hurt you. Let me teach you to love it rough. You know deep inside you want it to hurt, it turns you on. I will be Caleb for you and hurt you until you beg for more."

  Lisa forced herself to take a step back. "What are you?"

  Caleb's form shimmered and became a man just as tall and handsome but with stark white hair, eyes black and empty. A whisper of leathery wing drifted across his back. "Anything you want me to be. Come with me, Lisa, and let me hurt you. You will like it."

  The tendrils of mist tightened around her arms. The man smiled, showing pointed teeth, his eyes like holes into nothing.

  "Go away. Get out of my dream."

  "I am incubus," he hissed. "I am made for dreams. I will take you to my mistress, who will teach you obedience."

  He pinned her face between his hands and crushed a kiss to her mouth. She flinched at the invasion of his tongue and his vile taste. She tried to cry out, but he pressed his thumbs to the corners of her mouth, opening her wide to kiss her harshly.

  She felt a surge of power within her and heard her wind chimes jangling like crazy. She took a long, gasping breath, nearly choking on the cloying sex smell of the incubus, then her eyes flew open and she was lying, panting and sweating and alone, in her own bed.

  Lights blared in her living room and the CD player belted out The Marriage of Figaro, the powerful strains of Mozart drowning the disappointed hiss of the incubus. Lisa threw back the covers and scrambled out of bed, but she was alone in the room in her light nightshirt, the incubus nowhere in sight. Music surrounded her and blocked out thoughts of the dream.

  "Caleb," she called.

  She heard nothing but the rising crescendos and runs at the end of the piece. She padded out to the living room on the cushion of noise and found it empty. The fan had fixed on the wind chimes, sending them jingling and dancing and adding their sweet music to the clamor.

  The overture ended and the CD player fell silent. The fan rotated past the wind chimes, and they settled down into a soft tinkling.

  Lisa found the remote control for the CD player on the floor, facedown. The fan could have gotten stuck and perhaps blown the remote off the table which landed on the play button.

  Weeks ago, she might have accepted that explanation, but after today she didn't think so. Li Na's lucky magic surrounded this apartment, Caleb claimed. The incubus had tried to harm her or steal her through her dreams, and the magic and music had stopped it.

  Beyond the bright living room, the darkness of the balcony gaped like a maw. In the silence Lisa thought she heard the faint thump of a foot, the leathery whisper of wings. Bile in her throat, she pulled the curtains tight over the windows then clicked on the CD player again. She filled every slot with discs from Mozart to Stevie Ray Vaughan and started it up.

  She spent the rest of the night on the sofa, right under the wind chimes, with the lights on and music surrounding her.

  "You were to bring her back," Donna told the incubus who stood before her, his wings moving slowly behind his naked body.

  "The magic was too strong. She floated free in her dreams, but the magic in the house pulled her back before I could take her."

  "Caleb has done his job too well," Donna mused. "I told him to keep the black dragon from getting his hands on her, but the simple-minded warrior dragon is shutting me out as well." She smiled. "Ah, well, more fun when I have Caleb help me kill the woman he has come to care for. Even better when I tell him why. What goes around comes around."

  The incubus didn't understand, that was clear, but he smiled anyway.

  Donna's satisfaction surged. "Lisa will pay for what she did to my sister. I can't change what happened, or what will happen, but once Lisa knows what and who she is, she will understand why I am killing her, why I am killing the last of her kind. Her power will be nothing to mine when I am ready."

  Incubus were simple creatures, interested in sex and death and nothing else. But they were useful and had so much raw power she sang with it.

  She held out her hand. "Come here."

  The incubus, knowing what was about to happen, widened his smile and sauntered across the room to take her hand.

  In the morning, Lisa rose from the sofa, groggy and tired, and shuffled in the bathroom to take a shower. Sunshine poured through the windows, erasing the fears of the previous night, but Caleb still hadn't returned.

  Lisa faced a new dilemma this
morning—taping of the cooking show would recommence today, and she had to go to work. She hoped Caleb would breeze through the bedroom door before she had to leave and everything would be all right. Hazeltine wouldn't understand about lucky magic and why Lisa couldn't come in—she'd simply hire another assistant and there would go her job.

  She could take a cab, Lisa reasoned, and wear the charms from the bowl with the dragon on the bottom she'd worn yesterday to go shopping. She'd be in the cab from door to door, and that would be safe, at least from everything but the cabbie's driving.

  She examined the charms as she took them from the bowl, each hanging from a colored ribbon. Made of soft gold, the moon represented the Goddess and water, the dragon represented fire, the blossom represented the earth, and the tiny bird's wing represented air, Li Na had told her. Four elements, balanced and equal. When they were balanced, the fifth element, Akasha, untouchable yet powerful, would be present, Li Na had taught her. She felt a little better as she put them around her neck, the gold clinking softly.

  She called a taxi and waited inside until it came to the door. Mrs. Bradley came up the stairs from walking Mike as Lisa went down, the older woman and the terrier ordinary and cheerful.

  "Good morning, Lisa," Mrs. Bradley chirped. "Where is that nice young man of yours, Caleb is it?"

  "He had to go home for a little bit. He'll be back."

  "I hope so, he's so chatty and friendly." Mrs. Bradley winked as she went on past. "Besides, he's a hunk."

  Lisa shared a smile with her then she went on downstairs to the taxi. Her grin faded as she plopped in the back seat of the taxi—checking first that the driver wasn't either the black dragon or a white-haired incubus.

  What do I do if Caleb never comes back? The thought caused her a moment's alarm and a pain in her heart. She couldn't imagine returning to life before her warrior dragon had become human and wrapped his arms around her. Kissing him alone was an almost orgasmic experience. What would happen if he took her into his strong arms and made swift, sweet love to her? Her cheeks grew hot, and so did the space between her legs. It had been a long time since just thinking about a man had made her wet.