Dead End

by Debbie Cassidy

  We flew above the truck, tracking its progress and keeping an eye on the surroundings from an aerial viewpoint. Lyrian was silent, closed off, and my heart ached. I’d obviously hurt him last night. Feeling Micha and me together couldn’t have been easy. We needed to talk about it. I pressed my body to Lyrian’s back and, closing my eyes, cracked open the door between us. There was a little resistance, but he opened for me.

  His consciousness flooded my mind. What is it, Echo?

  I’m sorry about last night.

  You have nothing to apologize for.

  Then why are you mad at me?

  I’m not mad at you.

  You could have fooled me.

  A sigh. We can talk about this later. We’re here.

  The door between us swung closed, and then we were going in for a landing, but there was a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach that had nothing to do with our descent.

  The area we landed in had been a residential zone once. Houses lined the street, empty and covered in moss and other types of tenacious flora from the surrounding gardens, but the road was free of flora. Emory opened the back of the truck to reveal a bunch of equipment—monitors, a tiny generator, and the modified scuttler head.

  He and Micha carried the scuttler head out of the truck and placed it on the ground.

  “How do we do this?” Lyrian asked.

  “We connect this up to my computer, we fire it up, and we send out a message in binary.”

  “And Genesis won’t pick up on it?” Lyrian looked skeptical.

  “Hopefully not. It will be hidden in generic code, but if Roland is listening, then he should pick up on it, and hopefully send a message back.”

  Emory headed back to the truck and returned with one end of a cable. He flipped open a hatch at the back of the scuttler head and plugged the cable into it.

  “What’s the message?” Micha asked.

  I was thinking the same thing.

  “It can’t be too long,” Emory said. “I’m thinking if Roland knew his location, he’d have told Echo in his message. He wouldn’t have asked her to simply find him. So, we message asking him to help us find him. All he needs to do is respond, and when he does, we can trace it back to wherever it originated. Hopefully fast enough to avoid detection by Genesis.” Emory straightened and tugged at the cuffs of his gloves. “Are you ready?”

  My pulse was suddenly pounding. “Yes.”

  Emory nodded and then backed up toward the truck and climbed in. He crouched by the computer he had strapped to a ledge built into the wall of the vehicle. His gloved fingers flew across the keys, and then the scuttler’s eyes lit up green.

  I took an involuntary step back, and Lyrian’s chest brushed my back. His hand came up to rest on my hip briefly before he removed it.

  “Okay,” Emory said. “Sending now.” He sat back on his haunches and looked at me with a terse smile. “Now, we wait.”

  The scuttler’s green eyes glared up at me, and my palms were suddenly sweaty. “How long?”

  Emory shrugged. “No idea. It could be seconds, it could be minutes or even longer. We wait for as long as we’re not detected. I’ll know if we’re tagged.” His gaze scanned whatever data was scrolling across his screen.

  The minutes dragged by like reluctant feet on a journey they weren’t eager to make. Micha blew out a breath and began to pace. Emory remained in the truck, his eyes on the monitor.

  “I’m going to take a walk.” Lyrian strode off down the road a little way.

  “Stay close!” Emory called out.

  I watched the Draconi leave, and then Micha caught my eye and jerked his head in Lyrian’s direction. “Go. Sort out whatever it is that needs sorting between you two.”

  There was no need to ask how he knew—we were inextricably connected. Instead, I set off after Lyrian. He’d disappeared into an abandoned house several meters away. The wooden door was hanging off its hinges, the windows were nothing but shattered glass, and a strange, musty smell permeated the air.

  “Lyrian?” I stepped over the threshold into the gloom.

  “Over here.” He was standing by a mantelpiece staring at the grime-covered photographs in dusty frames that, by some miracle, were untouched.

  I joined him and studied the people in the frames. A family, smiling and carefree. This had been someone’s home. It was battered, and the furniture was torn and broken now, but at one time, humans had lived here in harmony.

  “It could be like this again one day,” Lyrian said softly, almost as if he was speaking to himself. “We could turn the tide.”

  “I hope so.”

  Last night still simmered between us, and if we didn’t address it, that tension would boil over sooner rather than later. It was my fault. I’d been callous and careless. “I should have been more considerate last night.”

  His chest rose and fell in a sigh. “No. It wasn’t your fault. I should have backed off.”

  Okay. Maybe. “But you didn’t …”

  “No.” He kept his gaze on the mantel, and his jaw flexed. Why was he holding back?

  “Lyrian? Look at me.”

  “Echo, please, don’t make this harder than it already is.”

  I stepped between him and the object of his regard, and the heat of his body filled the space between us, seeping through my clothes and licking at my skin. A pleasant tingle ran up my arms. Did he feel it too?

  I tried to catch his eye, but he refused to look at me. “Why is this so hard? Why can’t you look at me, touch me, kiss me?”

  His breath hitched. “Friends don’t do that.”

  “This isn’t friendship, Lyrian. And I know you feel it too, so what is the problem?”

  He kept his gaze fixed over my head. I poked him in the chest with an index finger, childish, but damn, I was so annoyed right now. “Lyrian.”

  “The problem is me,” Micha said from the doorway.

  Lyrian’s body tensed, and his jaw clenched, but in the next instant, his expression had smoothed out.

  He turned to his brother. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, I do,” Micha said. “You’re trying to protect me, to be a big brother by hiding the fact that your scalemate bond with Echo is more than friendship. That you’re attracted to her because she’s your one true mate.”

  “Micha—”

  “No.” Micha cut him off with a raised hand. “I’m not entirely clueless. I can see what’s happening, and I feel your pain. It has to stop. Stop pretending and stop lying to yourself. I’m a big boy. I can handle it.”

  Lyrian tucked in his chin. “I want you to have this, Micha.”

  “Yeah?” Micha canted his head. “I don’t need you to give me anything. Echo and I have a bond regardless of what you have with her. Your acting on what’s natural isn’t going to change that.”

  What the heck was going on here? “Micha? Lyrian? Hello.”

  Micha tore his ember gaze from his brother and fixed it on me. “Lyrian thinks I’m still the sickly child that needs coddling. The one who wasn’t able to fly as high, or run as fast as his older siblings, the one that was always left behind and given the hand-me-downs. He wants to be big brother and make it so you’re the one thing in my life that I can claim as my own. Not a thing to be shared or a hand-me-down, but you see, relationships don’t work that way.” His wry smile was aimed at Lyrian. “Echo isn’t a thing, she’s a person, and she has a bond with us both. By denying yourself, you deny her too. Do you want to cause her pain?”

  Lyrian’s head jerked up. “Of course not.”

  Micha shrugged. “Then stop being an ass.” His lips curved in a grin that was all challenge. “Unless you’re afraid to share …” He strolled from the room.

  I stepped in front of Lyrian and lifted my chin to look up at him. “Is that what you were doing?”

  Lyrian’s icy blues darkened. He wanted me, and my proximity was affecting him just as much as his was affecting me.

  He ran
a hand over his face. “Micha is my baby brother. Growing up, things weren’t easy for him. Bastion and Aidan could be unintentionally cruel. They took what was his on more than one occasion. But there was this one time …” He took a deep breath. “Micha had a pet, a tiny rodent that he kept in his pocket and took everywhere with him. He loved that creature, called it Twinkle. He must have been nine or ten years old at the time, Keep-bound because of his wings being so delicate, but Twinkle seemed to make things easier for him. Bastion and Aidan thought it would be funny to steal the creature. They locked it in a box and hid it. Micha was devastated, but they promised to return it if Micha agreed to run errands for them all day. Micha did whatever they said, but at the end of the day, when they handed over the box, Twinkle was dead. The fools hadn’t made any breathing holes in the box, and the tiny creature had suffocated. Micha may not have been able to feel physical pain, but there was no doubt he felt emotional pain. He cried for hours and withdrew for days after. I swore to myself that even if I couldn’t protect him from physical pain, I could protect him from a broken heart. When I bonded with you …” He broke off and ducked his head. “He was in so much pain. There was so much anger. I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t take you from him.”

  He’d been trying to protect Micha by pushing me away, but this thing that was between us wasn’t a connection that could be so easily severed. If anything, it was getting stronger by the day, making it harder and harder for me not to be in his orbit, not to touch him or breathe him in.

  I pressed a palm to his chest and bit back a sigh as the contact soothed the itch in my heart. “You’re not taking anything from Micha. I have enough love for the both of you. You may be able to ignore what we have, but I can’t. Lyrian …” I swallowed past the tightness in my throat and stepped closer, so our bodies were almost touching. “You’re in my blood.”

  His mouth softened, and his pupils dilated as he drank me in. He leaned in, and my pulse kicked up.

  “Echo, Lyrian!” Micha popped his head round the door. “Something’s happening.”

  Lyrian’s head snapped up, and he took a shuddering breath. Giving Lyrian a we’ll-continue-this-later look, I followed Micha out of the house.

  Emory was typing away inside the truck. “We have a reply, just decoding and running a trace. Stand by.”

  Oh, God. This was the moment of truth. I shifted from foot to foot.

  “Hydropower. Time running out,” Emory read out.

  Hydropower? What the hell?

  “Trace is running.” Emory sat forward, the gleam of green letters and numbers scrolling across his spectacles. The indents by his mouth deepened as he concentrated. “Come on, come on.”

  We were close, so fucking close, and then a buzz filled the air, and my hackles rose.

  “Watch out!” Micha shoved me into Lyrian, and the ground where I’d been standing exploded in a spray of dust and cement.

  My lungs seized as the dust invaded them, and my body spasmed in a cough. Another explosion to our right. What the hell was happening? A chasm had opened, separating Lyrian and me from Micha and Emory. The world was filled with the buzz of drones, larger, more dangerous than the regular ones. Shit. I raised a hand and blasted it with arcana, but the drone dove out of the way, and then red lasers lanced toward me. Lyrian snagged me around the waist, and we leapt out of the way just in time to avoid getting hit. The drones flew off, but they were circling back.

  Crap. I reached for my staff, but Lyrian shook his head. “We can’t risk taking them on. More are coming.” He pointed to the horizon. “We have to go.”

  There was no going aerial, no getting to the truck. “Go!” I waved Emory and Micha away. “Get out. Go. We’ll take cover and follow when the coast is clear.”

  Micha looked torn, but Emory was by his side, yanking him toward the truck. “Get in, now.”

  The air exploded in a whooshing sound. Incoming.

  Lyrian’s hand was in mine. “Run.”

  Lyrian and I broke into a sprint. We ran away from the road and into the network of streets, deeper and deeper into the alleys between the houses. The buzz of drones was still loud in the air.

  Lyrian shouldered open the side door to a building, and we tumbled into the darkness. With the door closed, the sound was muted, but there was no denying they were still out there searching. Oh, God. Please, let Emory and Micha have gotten away. What if the drones chased them? What if they blew up the truck?

  I unclipped the radio from my waist and stared at it. Satellite radio. If they made it back, they’d contact us, right?

  Lyrian led me deeper into the house. Through what had once been a kitchen and to a door that led to a basement.

  “The more layers between us and them, the better,” Lyrian said. “If they have thermo imaging, this could make it harder for them to detect us.”

  There was a lock on the inside of the basement door, and he flipped it and then carefully climbed down the stairs. I clung to him in the pitch dark, and then we were on level ground.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  Shit, he was gone, and I was alone in the dark, but the scuff of his boots on the ground and the rustle of fabric was comforting. There was a lick of flame, and then the room lit up in candlelight.

  I’d expected dusty shelves and storage, but this was an actual room, a living space. A sofa, a lumpy-looking bed, and bookshelves. Someone had used this as a bedroom once. I’d seen enough old movies to imagine an older teen lounging here with his or her friends, pretending they were independent while their parents roamed overhead.

  Lyrian set the candle on a low table. “We stay here until the drones depart, and then we fly home.”

  I hugged myself. “Do you think Emory and Micha made it?” Emotion clogged my throat. “I mean, they got away, right?”

  Lyrian gripped my shoulders. “We can’t worry about that now. There’s nothing we can do but hope they made it. You have the radio, and they’ll contact us once they get back to the Hive.”

  He was right. “So, we wait.”

  Lyrian cocked his head. “The drones are still out there.”

  “You can hear them?”

  “Yes. I can hear them. I have excellent senses.”

  I sat on the edge of the mattress. “Hydropower. What do you think he meant?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out.”

  Lyrian sat beside me and leaned forward, forearms on his thighs. “Now, we wait.”

  The time ticked by, and the awareness between us grew like a stubborn bloom.

  Lyrian cleared his throat, and when he spoke his voice was a delicious rumble. “Echo, when we get back, we should start fresh.”

  Thank God. “I’d like that.”

  We sat in companionable silence, but my mind was whirring, worried about Micha, worried about Emory, and then the radio flared to life with a crackle.

  I fumbled, unclipping it from my belt, and Lyrian reached around me to help. His arm brushed my breast, and my breath stalled, but then he was handing me the radio.

  “Hello?” The tremor in my voice was more from Lyrian’s proximity than anything else.

  “Echo, are you two all right?” Micha asked.

  “We’re fine. We’re safe. You made it back okay?”

  “They stopped chasing us about a mile out. Emory thinks they may be limited to a certain radius.”

  “They’re still hovering overhead here.”

  “Dammit.”

  There was a scuffle, and then Emory’s voice came on. “Stay low, stay where you are. Check in with us in an hour. They should leave if they can’t locate you.”

  “Okay, but did you get a hit on location?”

  “No.”

  Fuck. “So, we’re screwed.”

  “Not entirely. Micha is about to speak to his mother. If anyone knows of a hydropower plant topside, then it will be Wilomena and her Draconi. They’ve flown all over.”

  Another scuffle. “Hey,” Micha said. “Take care of
yourself and … take care of Lyrian too. I love you both.”

  My heart swelled. “We love you too. I’ll see you soon.”

  I turned the radio off to preserve the battery and placed it on the table by the bed. The ball of tension in my chest melted. The guys were okay, and now there was no ignoring the fact that I was alone in a basement with Lyrian. The candlelight made shadows on the wall and flickered across his bold features becomingly.

  “Are they still out there?” My voice had dropped to a whisper.

  His throat bobbed, and he turned to look at me with eyes drowning in need. “Yes.” His tone was as hushed as mine.

  I shifted closer and raised my chin, so our lips were mere inches apart. “What should we do to pass the time?”

  He stood and took two steps away from me. My heart sank. But then he reached over his shoulder, grabbed the back of his tee, and pulled it over his head.

  My lungs stopped working at the glorious sight of his body. He wasn’t stocky like Micha, he was tall and broad, and his torso was hard pecs and washboard abs that tapered to slender hips. I grazed him with my gaze, trailing up to his face, lingering on his parted mouth, and then locking on his hungry eyes.

  “Open the door, Echo.”

  I felt him in my mind, and I pushed the door wide.

  He flooded me with sensation. Heat and ice worked together to wash over my body, tightening my nipples and slickening my core. My moan was involuntary, and I bit it back, suddenly embarrassed.

  Don’t. His tone was all command.

  Oh, God. Lyrian, what are you doing?

  This.

  His hand was in my pants, his fingers inside me, and yet, he was on the other side of the room.

  Shit. I arched my back and opened my legs wider. Oh, God.

  And then his fingers were replaced by something rough and flexible, oh, fuck, his tongue and his mouth. I fell back onto the bed, pulling my knees up and opening for him, raising my hips as he tasted me. I was fully clothed, and he was across the room, but he was tasting me, he was stroking me, and yeah, it was some strange mind meld thing, but damn, it was hot as fuck, and I wanted and needed more.