Since Darren now refused to have anything to do with him, Knox was forced to take the bus to work. But as he knew where Darren kept his spare key to his car, Knox had borrowed the Chevy sedan the evening before while Darren and Jimmy sat drinking in the Mule’s Shoe. He had returned it to the same spot after shooting the boy-toy, and Darren never knew he had taken it.
After clocking in, Knox rubbed his wounded arm absently, seeing Jimmy, Darren, and their pals yucking it up near a half-finished house. “Bastards,” Knox muttered.
“Knox.”
He turned and found Old McKenzie beckoning to him from the office trailer. Thinking the supervisor wanted to go over the day’s work with him, Knox followed him inside. The supervisor leaned against a worktable, staring hard at Knox. “You’re fired.”
Knox blinked. “What?”
“I’ve been hearing talk,” McKenzie went on. “How you you’re planning to kill your ex. I can’t have that on my work site.”
“But I was just mad,” Knox protested. “I don’t mean it.”
“I don’t care. You’re a liability now. You’re disrupting work; the crews don’t like you, don’t want to work with you. You were already walking a tight rope with me, and then you just went off the wrong end. Now get off my job site.”
Numb, Knox turned around and walked out of the trailer. Jimmy and Darren watched him from where they lifted a slab of drywall, and Knox instantly knew the two of them had squealed. “You’re next, boys,” he growled. “Once I kill Jordan and have my baby, you better be watching your backs.”
He walked to the bus stop and waited for his bus, wondering what to do. He’d go back to his apartment and get his rifle. He’d put it in a case so it wouldn’t look so threatening, then hitch a ride out to the ranch. Once he killed Jordan, he’d take Caitlyn, and Jordan’s truck, and take her back to his apartment.
“Anybody asks,” he muttered, “I’m going rabbit hunting.”
Then he planned to wait outside the Mule’s Shoe for Jimmy and Darren, then shoot them. Once they were dead on the ground, he’d take Caitlyn and head north. Cross the border, and they’d both be free as birds. Knox would get a new job, and Caitlyn would be his baby girl again.
“Yep.” He nodded to himself. “That’ll work. Just have to take care of business first. Without the boy-toy, Jordan is an easy mark.”
While he happily recalled that he had managed to kill the boy-toy the previous night and could have taken Jordan out had she not fired the shotgun at him, Knox boarded the bus. As the bus took him back into the city, Knox refined his plans and worked out how he would get to the property, then storm the house.
Chuckling to himself, Knox watched the city roll by from the window. “Soon, my baby girl,” he crooned under his breath. “Soon we’ll be together, just you and me.”
The truck driver that picked him up hitchhiking dropped him off not far from Jordan’s driveway. Knox waved, calling, “Thanks, man,” as the driver pulled away in a plume of dust. As the dude was an over-the-road trucker, it wasn’t likely he’d hear about the shootings, if they hit the news at all. Nor would he connect them to Knox if he did happen to hear about them.
Knox had timed it perfectly. He walked down the drive toward the ranch house just as dusk was falling, and once it grew dark enough, he’d break the house’s door down. He would take Jordan by surprise, shoot her dead, then take Caitlyn and the big truck. Crouching in the bushes at the edge of the yard, Knox watched Jordan walk from the barn toward the house.
But she carried the shotgun.
That meant she was expecting him. That doesn’t matter. She doesn’t know I’m here. He considered shooting her then and there, but he knew at that range, he could easily miss. She was just a little too far away. Biding his time, Knox let her head back to the house, still planning on how to catch her without the damn shotgun.
Suddenly, a wild, savage barking resounded through the early evening, startling him. Axel bounded toward him, barking, snarling, and Jordan’s head whipped around. Shut up, you stupid mutt. Shut up! Knox kicked himself for having left Axel out of his plans. The dog knew him, yes, but now it appeared he had chosen sides.
Jordan leveled the shotgun toward him, trying to see him. Axel’s barking told her where he was, and, swearing, Knox stood up to fire. His shot exploded at Axel’s paws, making the dog yelp and dash back toward Jordan. He pumped the rifle and fired again, fast, at Jordan, and again, he missed. Knox wasn’t taking the time to aim carefully.
Jordan fired both barrels of the shotgun from her hip, and the pellets struck the ground in front of him. Unbelievably, she had also missed. Knox blinked, unable to quite believe he was still alive, then Jordan and the dog ran into the house and slammed the door behind her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sitting on the couch, his shoulder still hurting, Neil heard Axel barking savagely. Then, before his noise had died away, the sound of gunshots. And the shotgun’s blast. “Shit,” he swore, struggling to get off the couch. “Stay in here, Caitlyn.”
“What’s wrong, Neil?” she asked, her eyes round with fear. She, too, had heard Axel’s barking and recognized the sound of gunfire.
“Stay in here,” he repeated, hurrying out of the sitting room.
The kitchen door crashed open, and Jordan ran in just as Neil got there.
“It’s Knox,” she gasped, slammed it closed, then locked it once Axel had run through. “He shot at me.”
“Did he shoot you?” Neil felt both terror that Jordan had been shot and a wave of pure rage.
Jordan tossed the shotgun on the counter and grabbed the phone.
“Are you shot, Jordan?” he yelled.
“What? No.” She paced away from him as the terror leached from him leaving only the anger, the sheer predatory desire to hunt and kill. He stared out the kitchen window but saw no sign of Knox. Jordan’s voice spun him around.
“Yeah, my ex-husband is here; he’s trying to kill us. Please send the police. What? No, no one is hurt, but he’s got a gun. He already tried to shoot me. Please, just send the police. Hurry.”
Jordan gave the address of the ranch, and that’s when Neil saw Knox. “Shit,” Jordan snapped, pacing. “It’ll take them twenty minutes to get here.”
“Stay inside with Caitlyn,” he ordered. “Go into the sitting room; there are no windows. Whatever you do, neither of you look outside.”
Jordan clutched his arms, her dark eyes huge, almost swallowing up her pale, beautiful face. “What are you gonna do?”
“You don’t want to know. Now get in there with Caitlyn.”
Not waiting to see if she obeyed him or not, Neil left by the door on the other side of the house. Knox had been stealthily creeping toward this side, but at the moment, Neil didn’t see him. He took a moment to lock the door but didn’t worry that Knox would get past him.
Knox was going to burn.
Changing into his dragon, Neil lunged upward, spreading his wings wide and catching the breeze. He ignored the shooting pain from his shoulder and kept flying. It was nearly dark, and if Knox didn’t see him change forms and hit the skies, Neil knew he’d be almost invisible. He circled over the house, peering down, searching for Knox, soaring to remain even quieter.
There. Knox, the rifle in his hand, edged his way along the house’s outer wall. Neil needed him away from the structure, but he continued to circle while he watched, waiting. Knox tried the door and found it locked, then aimed his rifle at the knob. Oh, no you don’t.
Neil roared, flaming.
Knox spun around with a short scream of terror, gazing up as Neil flew low overhead. Knox raised the gun toward him, and Neil banked sharply left, and dove. Knox fired, but the shot missed Neil by a long distance. I need him away from the house. Hoping he wouldn’t cave the roof in, Neil settled onto the house’s steeply angled peak, then sent a wash of flash down at Knox.
He succeeded.
Knox shrieked again, then ran toward the fields, perhaps hoping to hide hi
mself in the darkness. He fired a few more shots in Neil’s direction, but one bullet skipped off the shingles and ricocheted into the night with a sharp whine. The other never came close. Neil permitted Knox to run for a bit, all the while watching him.
A dragon’s night vision is better than a cat’s. When Knox was a good distance away, Neil leaped into the sky again and followed, circling the man as he continued to run, panicked by the monster behind him. He roared again, flaming, sending more panic into him. He watched, amused, as Knox stumbled and almost fell, then spun and aimed the gun up at him.
The shot, like many others, went wild, and Neil wondered if he might be running out of ammunition. Driving Knox as Jordan herded the cattle, Neil pushed him further on, roaring and flaming as Knox gasped for breath, running, stumbling, crying out as Neil steadily dogged him.
The house was out of sight now, but Neil needed that gun empty. He roared again, his flames licking at Knox’s ass. Knox turned and fired, and this time the bullet grazed Neil’s hip. He roared as the pain rushed through him, letting it raise his fury to a higher level. Fire again, you shit. Empty your weapon.
As though hearing him, Knox spun around, stopping to take a more careful aim up at him—
The gun clicked.
Glancing ahead, Neil saw how close Knox was to the forest and knew the time for playing was done. Stooping on Knox as a hawk stoops upon a mouse, Neil dove, flaming. His fire, hot enough to melt steel, caught Knox completely. Knox drew breath to scream, and sucked flames into his throat, his lungs. Burning from both the inside and the outside, Knox danced a dying jig.
Back-winging to keep himself in place, Neil hovered over him, breathing his flames onto Knox again and again, melting the rifle into a lump of slag. He continued to flame, burning the spot until there was nothing left of the man.
The white-hot metal lay on the ground, smoking, as Neil halted his flames at last. There was nothing under the slag save bare ground, blackened where Neil’s flames burned the man to death.
Neil hovered for a moment longer, watching as the tiny flames on the grass withered and went out. No longer worried that a fire would spread from the molten metal, Neil banked around and flew back to the house.
In the distance, a chain of red and blue lights flashed, and he heard the sirens wailing. He estimated they were about five minutes from reaching the house, and he had to get there first. Landing in the yard, he changed into his human half, then called through the kitchen window.
“Jordan! It’s me. Open the door.”
Axel galloped into the kitchen, barking, as Jordan, shotgun in hand, trotted in behind him. “Neil,” she cried, then yanked the door open. “You’re safe.”
She clung to him as he limped in, Axel still making a racket. Quiet, my brother; all is well. Quiet now. Go to Caitlyn. Axel obeyed and loped back into the sitting room. Neil held Jordan close, murmuring something in her ear just as the first police vehicles rolled into the yard. Letting him go, Jordan set the shotgun aside and looked at up at Neil.
“Is he—”
“He’s gone.”
Her eyes searched his for a moment, then the police stepped onto the porch. “Ma’am? Did you call in a report of a shooter?”
It took hours to explain everything to the police. Jordan did most of the talking while Neil sat beside her and held her hand. She told them everything—except Neil getting shot and that he was a dragon. A female cop kept Caitlyn entertained, making her laugh as more police outside searched for Knox.
“We found shell casings,” said one, stepping into the living room.
The lead cop looked at Neil. “You said you chased him? How far?”
“I’m not sure,” Neil replied. “He kept trying to shoot me, grazed me on the leg.”
He stood up momentarily to show his bloody jeans. Jordan gaped. “He shot you?”
“It’s just a graze.”
The cop eyed him sharply. “You know it’s not smart to chase a man with a gun.”
Neil stared defiantly back. “He was going to kill my lady,” he snapped, sitting back down. “I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
“So, you chased him. Then what?”
Neil shrugged. “I lost him. For all I know, he’s still running.”
His ashes are floating on the breeze, but you’ll never find them.
“We’ll continue our investigation,” the cop said, finally standing. “And we’ll find Knox.”
“Please do,” Jordan told him. “He needs to be in jail. He’s been threatening to kill us for weeks now.”
“We’ll find him, ma’am.”
Limping into the kitchen, hand in hand with Jordan, Neil watched the police drive away into the darkness. He looked down at her. Jordan gazed up. “Will they find him, Neil?” she asked, her voice soft.
Neil smiled and cupped her cheek with the palm of his hand. “No.”
In her eyes, he recognized that she knew what he had done. She swallowed hard, then her expression firmed. “You had no choice. He would have killed us.”
“As far as anyone knows, he’s vanished to Canada,” Neil said quietly. “He’s gone.”
“And Caitlyn? What do we tell her?”
Neil glanced toward the sitting room where the sound of Caitlyn’s happy chatter with Axel came through. “We have time to decide on that. When she’s old enough to understand, we can tell her.” He smiled. “Or not.”
“Neil, I love you.”
Jordan rushed into his arms, and Neil held her tightly to him, knowing that he had found a place among these humans, and a mate he could love with all his passion, for all his days. “I love you, Jordan,” he murmured. “I will always love you.”
Revenge of My Dragon Savior
Book III
By
Serena Meadows
Chapter One
The wind whispered under his wings, speaking to him in the language only the creatures of the air understood. It talked, it cajoled, it spoke to him of the mysteries of flight, of secrets, of strength. For the air was all-powerful, a goddess of temper and kindness, raging and destructive one moment, caressing a cheek the next.
Yet, despite her love for him, Ronan ignored her chatter. Filled with rage and grief, he couldn’t abide the air goddess’s whispers. Below him, the city’s bright lights almost blinded him after the nearly absolute darkness of his home. Former home, he thought bitterly, banking between two tall skyscrapers on a wingtip. He had to fly almost sideways to avoid scraping his wings against the tall structures.
The noise from below him only added to his fury. The cacophony of the engines, the endless honking, the babble of the humans all made him want to dive and slay. He hadn’t touched feet to ground and already he hated this place, its stench, its humans. I can go someplace else. Surely, there are other places I can adopt as my own rather than this filthy hellhole.
Banking lower, fully aware that he might be seen, and the elders had drilled it into his head since he was small—the human species must never know what they are or that they exist. Dipping his right wing, Ronan flew toward an area where the lights weren’t so bright, the noise not so loud.
Over the buzzing of vehicles passing by, he clearly heard a scream. It jolted him from his self-pity and anger, and he banked toward it. A female, maybe? Flying noiselessly just above the shorter structures, he listened, scanning the alleys below with eyes that saw as clearly in the darkness as they did in daylight.
“No, please, don’t.”
The sobbing, the cries of pain and fear, drew him as though he were on strings. There. Circling on silent wings, he watched as the big male slapped the cowering female across the face, throwing her to the ground. Females are to be cherished, not struck. His anger rose again, his grief and fury mounting as the human kicked her as she lay amid the nasty garbage of the alley.
“Where’s my money, you bitch?” he yelled at her. “Tell me, dammit.”
The sobbing increased as he drew in his wings and drifted silently tow
ard them. Though he wanted to kill the aggressive male, he knew that might easily land him in more trouble than he was already in. Floating in behind the male, he shifted forms and dropped lightly to the pavement.
The male heard him. Spinning around, he bared his teeth, reaching for a weapon under his leather jacket. “Where’d you come from?”
“Leave her alone.”
“This ain’t none of your business, asswipe, so get out of here.”
Ronan, already enraged, wasn’t about to back down from a fight. He had six inches and easily fifty pounds of muscle on the male, but the human had a weapon and a whole lot of meanness. Still, Ronan had been a champion brawler in his clan and hadn’t felt a shred of fear since he was small.
When the male yanked a small black object from under his coat, Ronan knew what it was. He and his clan had learned about the humans and their fondness for guns, and he knew exactly what it would do. Faster than the male could pull the trigger, Ronan seized him by the wrist.
Twisting hard, he turned the male’s arm so the gun pointed upward, enormous pressure on his bones, then slammed the arm on his unraised knee. Bones snapped like dry twigs breaking. The male screamed. Plucking the gun from his lax fingers, Ronan let him go.
“I did tell you to leave her alone,” he said conversationally.
Screaming louder than the female had, the male stumbled away from him, holding his broken right arm with his healthy left. Tears streamed from his eyes as he stared in horror at Ronan.
Ronan shoved the gun into his waistband at the small of his back. Raising his hands like claws, he twisted his face into a freaky mask, then yelled, “Boo!”
Shrieking, the male fled, running down the alley, his feet kicking cans and garbage, bumping into the big rubbish bins before he vanished.
Ronan gazed at the terrified female. She stared back at him. Dirty, bleeding, disheveled, her thick long hair of an indeterminate color falling nearly to her hips. She stank, yet beneath the stench of sweat, garbage, and something he couldn’t identify, she held an odor of innocence. How that could be, as innocence didn’t have a smell, but she did. He scented it.
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