Stroke of Fire

by Kira Nyte

  “Doubt me, do you?” Syn shook his head. “I have my ways.”

  He surprised her again, not only with a trip to the highly acclaimed eatery, but with the forethought of a reservation. A hostess led them through the packed dining room until they reached a smaller room off the main dining room lined with quiet booths and candlelight.

  She brought them to a corner booth, placed the menus down and left. Briella leaned against the table and took in the room, from the sensual drapery that decorated the walls to the glinting chandelier and fine tableware. She never believed she’d dine in this place. The menu prices were astronomical, but worth every dollar, according to what she’d heard.

  Syn handed her the wine menu. “You choose. It’s your special evening.”

  Briella shook her head. “I’m not really a wine connoisseur. I believe you might have a better idea of what’s good.” He arched a brow. Briella pressed the menu back to him. “Red. Something, I don’t know, that matches the mood of the night.”

  “You really enjoy playing with fire,” he said softly, his voice an unmistakable blend of his usual fluid accent with the rumble of his dragon. It played her humming nerves like a master musician. His gaze lingered on her as he opened the menu, and lowered to look over the list. “Ahh, I think I’ve got one.”

  “Good. I’ll pick the appetizer.”

  Briella and Syn placed their orders. Once the server left, Syn braced his forearms on the table and folded his hands.

  “How much do you like this city?” he asked.

  Briella furrowed a brow at his unusual question. “Why?”

  “I’m curious.”

  “Really? I think you know the answer.” She loved New Orleans, but she loved Syn more. Wherever he went, she’d follow. She’d paint at The Hollow and come back for art shows. It could work. “Where is this coming from?”

  “Let me rephrase. Would you like to live here?”

  Briella couldn’t help but laugh under her breath. “You’re cute. I live here now.”

  “Belle—”

  “Oh no you didn’t.” She straightened up in the booth and wagged a finger at him as his smile grew. “Don’t you dare pull that nickname out of the bag. That’s for my father only.”

  “Of course… Belle.”

  “I’d throw bread at you if we had any at the table.”

  “Good thing there’s nothing but knives and glassware.”

  Briella stared at him before laughing. “Okay, okay. Would I like to live here, long-term?” She shrugged. “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  She leaned forward, mirroring Syn’s posture. Their knuckles brushed. “Spill the beans, because I can’t hear your thoughts. What’s the surprise?”

  Syn reached for her hands. “Taryn is going to be putting his house on the market at the end of the month. I made him an offer.”

  Briella opened her mouth to say something, but the words were lost.

  “He loves the house, but he misses The Hollow.”

  “For good reason. That place is beautiful.” She couldn’t wait to return.

  Syn nodded. “It is, but this is the world you know. The world you’re familiar with. My world is not, and the last thing I want to do is rip you away from your roots. So Taryn and I were discussing the house and I offered him half of the value.”

  “Um, okay?” She tipped her head, uncertain of where Syn was going with this. “So you made a poor offer on his house?”

  “No. We’re going to be joint owners of the house. This way we can travel between The Hollow and here and have a place to settle down. He doesn’t want to give up the house, but he doesn’t want to stay here full-time any longer. After tonight, you’ll have more shows to look forward to, and we’ll need a place to stay for you to flourish with your art.”

  “But…” She shook her head. Was Syn truly willing to stay here? For her? “I thought you wanted to go back home.”

  He gave her hands a squeeze. “Why do I sense disappointment?”

  “Because.” Briella struggled with the mixed emotions roiling in her belly. Geez, where was the wine when she needed it? “Well, it’s just that I was maybe hoping that we could spend more time back at your home.”

  His shoulders straightened slightly. “The Hollow?”

  Briella nodded.

  “The last thing I want to do is take you away from here. From everything you’ve told me you worked so hard for. Your success.”

  “I think my priorities might have changed. I think that what I once saw as dreams and life paths were things that led me to where I am now.” She glanced around before meeting his gaze again. “To you, and everything that comes with you.”

  Syn’s gaze did numerous things to her, from warming her blood to making her wonder what was going through his mind. His thoughts were shuttered, and she turned down the internal volume of the conversations around them. She didn’t care for inspiration or eavesdropping right now.

  In fact, if she were honest with herself, her interest in her old source of inspiration deserted her the night Syn stepped in front of her outside her apartment. That night, he had become the source of her inspiration.

  After a long moment of silence, Syn climbed out of his side of the booth and slid onto the seat beside her. He surrounded her, an arm on the table, one on the seat back, and leaned close. “What do you want, love? I’ll give you anything.”

  She reached up to his jaw, the thick day-old scruff scraping her fingertips in a pleasurable way. “I want to give your home a chance. I would like to come back here, too, but it doesn’t feel right anymore. The day we spent at your home, I don’t know what it did, but it connected with me. That place is alive and beautiful and I want so badly to go back.”

  “I can arrange that.”

  “Did I tell you I love you?”

  Syn leaned in slowly. “I can lie and say no so I can hear it from your lips over and over.”

  “You won’t have to lie because I will never grow tired of saying it.”

  “Corner booth.”

  Briella jerked back before Syn could close the slight gap between them. She looked around, the strange voice in her head breaking the dull drone of conversations with its sharp tone.

  Syn’s demeanor changed in a blink, going from the laid-back man she could lose herself in for ages to the hawkish dragon on alert. “What is it?” he asked, his voice soft, but firm.

  “Something’s off.” She leaned over the table to look past him. “I just heard—”

  It took Briella a valuable moment for her mind to make sense of the blur that appeared at the end of the table. Syn shoved her back in the same second his head snapped to the side from the punch he took to the face. She gasped as he was pulled from the booth.

  “I’m done with you.”

  Briella’s eyes widened when she realized who spoke with such viciousness. Who laid another punch to Syn’s face.

  And Syn took the beating without attempting to defend himself.

  She scrambled out of the booth and shoved her way between Syn and Mark as her former friend released another punch. His fist rushed straight at her head.

  The pain never came, but the sharp clap of skin hitting skin brought her attention to where Syn had caught Mark’s fist in his palm.

  “You can hit me all you want. Harm a hair on her head and you’re a dead man,” Syn growled. Growled. With a jerk, he tossed Mark’s hand aside.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Briella hissed at Mark.

  The last thing she expected was a snide grin that made her former friend look maniacal. “Getting my girl back.”

  “Oh shit.”

  Briella hardly had a chance to respond to Syn’s cuss when she realized the room had frozen in time. No one moved, stuck in impossible positions with the help of magic.

  Mark laughed and raised his fist again.

  Syn snarled, smoke and all. He gripped Briella’s forearm at the same time he grabbed Mark’s shoulder and threw him to the grou
nd.

  “Run!”

  Briella bolted from the intimate dining room and stumbled to a halt.

  Syn appeared in front of her, forcing her back until she bumped into a wall.

  “Well, well, well. Look here.”

  Briella peered out from behind Syn’s arm to stare at the man who spoke. The tall, lithe man had a series of black tattoos on the side of his neck that stretched up his face to disappear into his black hair. Eyes like onyx stirred with shattered silver, cold, evil. He and a half dozen other men similarly adorned with facial tattoos spread out around the main dining room. The diners and servers looked like they’d been captured in a still frame from a movie. Candles flickered and music continued to play through the speakers, but not a single person moved. The utter stillness chilled her to her soul.

  “Two for the price of one. Darieth will be pleased.”

  One man lifted his hand. Gray smoke swirled around his fingers. Another man held an eerily familiar blue orb in his palm.

  The apparent leader of the pack pinched a large shrimp from a plate as he slowly walked past a table, coming closer. Briella could barely breathe, fear choking her and making her heart pound crazily.

  “Syn?”

  “Don’t. Move. Not unless I tell you.”

  “Hmm. Heard she was something to look at. No exaggeration there. We’ll definitely enjoy the view. Question is”—the man cocked his head to the side, those icy black eyes narrowing as his lips curled into a menacing grin for Syn—“will we make you watch what happens before we force her to watch you die?”

  Briella gripped his waist, her fingers biting hard into the steely plates of his scales. He hadn’t puffed up in size as she recalled from the voodoo shop, but his dragon was certainly preparing for a faceoff beneath the cover of this clothing. She dared to glance away from the tattooed men to see the tips of Syn’s dark talons stretching from his curled fingers.

  “These are Baroqueth, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  Syn’s confirmation was of no help in calming her rising anxiety.

  “Who has the dragonstone?” the leader asked. He tore the meat of the shrimp from the tail and chewed, flicking the tail onto a nearby table. “Someone opened it earlier.”

  Briella swallowed hard. “Oh no. Syn, I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t start apologizing. They were already onto us.”

  The leader paused a few tables away and cocked his head. “So, is this the game we’re going to play?” He snickered, a sound as cold as his dark eyes. “For a dragon, you’re pathetic. Look at you. Back against the wall like a coward.”

  A flash of light shot through the dining room. Briella stifled a shriek as a table exploded into splinters. The three businessmen and one woman seated there, stuck in their helpless frozen states, flew back over the floor in different directions. Blood oozed from their wounds, but they did not move.

  Syn stiffened against her.

  “Oops,” the leader said with a snide grin. “Looks like you have a decision to make, dragon. A few, actually.”

  The bastard crouched next to the closest fallen man, tilted his head and shrugged.

  “This guy’s going to die in a few minutes. Give me your stone and I’ll save the lot of these worthless creatures.”

  “Syn?”

  “It’s a trick, Briella. No matter what, death will come. Either to them or to us. And I won’t let death come to you.”

  She could feel the torment in his mind, the swirling storm of fury and hatred battering against the pliant walls of their connection.

  “Where’s the stone, dragon?”

  “Not here,” Syn said. His voice was barely recognizable through the fierce growl.

  The leader nodded thoughtfully.

  In a blink, he reached down and snapped the injured man’s neck.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Briella screamed and shrank behind Syn, her fingers gripping his shirt.

  “Not a good answer.”

  Syn watched all of the Baroqueth in the room with a keen eye. He sensed another somewhere, but couldn’t pin the location. The very idea that the woman from the voodoo shop was hovering somewhere close by, concealed in her misted form, left him seething in his scales and hyper wary.

  He could not leave Briella unprotected, which meant these innocent people would die.

  The Baroqueth laughed and swept his arms out. “I have an entire restaurant at my disposal. What will it do to you, Syn Terravon, to watch us kill every single person here because you won’t give up your stone? How bad will it rip your insides and twist your valiant mind not to protect these worthless humans?” The beast leaned forward at the waist, arching his dark brows over equally dark eyes that swam with malice. “How about your lifemate? Think about the trauma she’s about to witness. The carnage.”

  He had to get Briella out of the restaurant and to safety, but the only direction he could go was up, through the roof—and risk exposing his dragon to a city that wasn’t under the Baroqueth’s frozen spell.

  If that’s what it took, then he would do it.

  Briella’s safety came first. The only protection he could offer was that of his scales and his size as a dragon.

  “All you have to do is give us your stone.”

  Syn ground his teeth. “You really need a better line because we don’t willingly give up our stones. You know that.”

  The Baroqueth lowered his arms and hooked his thumbs casually in the belt loops of his jeans.

  A twisted arc of blue and gray magic exploded across the ceiling of the restaurant like a vicious storm preparing to unleash havoc.

  Syn’s stomach knotted. He’d damn well just lost the opportunity to escape skyward.

  Bolts of electricity sizzled in the blue-gray cloud.

  “One more chance.” The Baroqueth straightened up. “Oh, wait.”

  A spear of light whipped along the wall. Syn spun, unleashing his dragon as he cocooned Briella in his arms, absorbing the powerful hit meant for his lifemate. The dark magic spread over his scales as he twisted away from its iron-like grip.

  The magic sky rumbled.

  “Syn!”

  Fear shook her telepathic voice. The dragon within him swelled, prepared to protect and attack.

  “Whatever you do, love, don’t fight me.”

  Syn crushed Briella against his chest and lunged toward the smaller room they’d just left. The potent scent of electricity and humid energy filled the restaurant as the Baroqueth unleashed their deadly magic, aimed at the invisible target on his back.

  Brick exploded in front of them, a dusty plume erupting from a strike.

  Syn ducked, covering Briella’s smaller frame as he ran toward the line of windows at the front of the room. He dodged strike after strike, refusing to let the monstrous guilt unleash his dragon as innocent restaurant patrons and servers were maimed because of him. Because of Briella.

  Because of greed.

  “Protect your head, Briella, and hold on.”

  Syn launched them off the ground a split second before a ball of magic slammed down where he had been, creating a crater in the floor. He used the closest table as leverage and lunged toward the windows, twisting in midair, curling around Briella as they crashed through the plate glass.

  The entire line of windows exploded in a wave of magic, showering the sidewalk and street with shards of glass.

  Screams echoed through the evening.

  Sirens wailed.

  Syn hit the ground, back first. He absorbed the impact with a grunt, reined in his dragon until his scales disappeared, and unfolded from around Briella in one fluid moment. He kept his arm around her back, hand hooked under her arm, and dragged her to her feet before she had time to fully recover.

  Pedestrians parted to let them through.

  Syn didn’t get far before Gabe and Tajan dropped down in front of him.

  Without a word, Tajan grabbed Briella, unleashed his dragon, and rocketed toward the sky.
r />   “Syn!”

  “You’re safe with him. I won’t be far behind.”

  He shut off the telepathic connection, unable to stand the terror in her voice, unable to wash away the fear in her expression before Tajan disappeared from view.

  Gabe grabbed his arm and pulled him into a small space, off the sidewalk. “We need to go. There’s no way we can fight them without more humans dying. They’ve got the advantage.”

  “Cade?” Syn asked.

  “Regroup at Taryn’s house.”

  “Where’s Taj taking Briella?”

  “Hollow. It’s the safest place for her.”

  Syn bristled as Baroqueth energy grew dense in the air. “Let’s go.”

  They peered around the corner of the building. The street crawled with slayers on the hunt, their dark eyes glinting in the night and magic sparking along their fingers without regard to the humans who watched in shock. So many innocents.

  “Up?” Gabe asked quietly.

  “No.” He did a quick survey and motioned down the street. “Run that way. Take the alley across the way and try to zigzag. The longer we can keep to the ground, the better. We go up, we’ll have to come down again, and it’ll draw them straight to Taryn’s.”

  “Well”—Gabe jutted his chin toward the approaching wall of sorcerers—“let’s move.”

  Syn and Gabe shot from their hiding spot and bolted down the street.

  A loud boom shook the ground.

  Chunks of shattered pavement rained down, pelting their heads and backs.

  Syn weaved back and forth, dodging strikes. Pedestrians jumped aside, shrieked and shouted as they passed. Two men tried to stop them until they caught sight of the fire that erupted in Syn’s gaze and the smoke that came from his mouth and nose.

  Syn and Gabe cut down the alley.

  Baroqueth magic crashed through the corner of the building, leaving a gaping hole in the masonry.

  “Sure you don’t wanna fly?” Gabe growled.

  Syn glanced skyward. “Let’s go up.”

  They used their talons to scale the side of one building to the rooftop, their bodies swelling as they transformed.

  Gabe launched first, his dragon filling out and his wings lifting him up. Syn followed a heartbeat later.