“We dragons,” he gasped, snickering, “resemble reptiles. But we are mammals like humans. Our females get pregnant like humans and give live birth to our children.”
Emily snuggled against him as he wiped his face, snorting now and then. “I’m glad then. I don’t think I have the patience to sit on an egg until it hatches.”
Imagining Emily sitting on a nest with an egg in it sent Drake into another fit of laughter. “Stop,” he gasped, tears streaming down his face. “You’re killing me.”
“I don’t think it’s all that funny.” Emily sniffed. “You’re the only dragon I know. Maybe you were a reptile, despite your human part, and your mates laid eggs. In all the dragon stories I ever read, dragons came from eggs.”
“But, my sweet Emily, we are dragon shifters. Part human, part dragon, and the ability to go from one to the other.”
“Oh, I suppose that does make a difference.”
Propping himself up on his elbow, Drake gazed at her. “You make me very happy by wanting my children.”
“Yeah, I can see it now. Chasing after toddlers who switch to dragon form and set fire to the furniture.”
“That’s why we live in the mountains in caves. Hard to set fire to rock unless one is determined.”
“Well, I like my creature comforts, Drake, so don’t expect me to live in an old cave. I need my cable, my computer, my bed, and all the good stuff in life. Oh, and my wine, don’t forget that.”
“Never.”
He tickled her cheek with his finger, seeing her smile. “I’ll help make sure the kids don’t burn the furniture.”
“Good. That would be hard to explain to the neighbors.”
“And the fire department.”
“Them, too.”
“Can you see them now?” he asked, his voice low. “Young dragons, our children, learning to fly?”
“We’ll have to hide that from the neighbors, too.”
“Maybe we should move out into the country,” Drake suggested. “Away from nosy neighbors, from prying eyes, where we could raise our children in peace?”
Her eyes, luminous in the near dark, met his. “I’d like that very much.”
Far too early in Drake’s opinion, Clem knocked on the door the following morning. Emily was in the shower, and Drake clad only in his jeans opened it to find Clem glowering on the front stoop. “Sorry to bug you so early.”
He pushed past Drake without being invited and gazed around the quiet house. “Where’s Emily?”
“Shower.”
Drake closed the door, wondering what had gotten into Clem. He’s not normally this rude. “What’s up?”
“Have you two seen Toombs lately?”
By Clem’s challenging voice, Drake instantly suspected he knew something about the previous night’s adventure. “No.”
“You sure about that?”
“Why are you asking as though I’ve done something wrong?”
Clem swore and paced the living room. “Last night there was a suspicious fire on a two-lane blacktop highway. A truck caught fire, and the arson investigators can’t find a cause that makes sense.”
Drake knew he needed to tread carefully. “So?”
“So?” Clem scowled. “An asbestos-treated fireproof suit was recovered nearby, the suit nearly melted from a source of incredible heat. As was a rifle coated in that same asbestos. The unfired rounds inside had started to melt.”
I knew all I needed was a couple more seconds. “What does that have to do with us?”
Clem met his eyes. “There’s only one place in Chicago where one can obtain asbestos to cover a flame-retardant suit and a rifle. I called there this morning, and you know what? Under the threat of a lawsuit from me this morning, they admitted that a man named Jonas Toombs bought enough to cover said suit and rifle.”
“Oh.”
“By the nearly melted asphalt under and around the truck,” Clem snapped, “there was a very hot fire there. Shit, I have no idea how anyone could have survived flames like that, asbestos suit or not. The truck itself was a melted slag heap.”
Clem paced around the room, agitated and angry, and at that moment, Emily walked in. She wore a towel over her wet hair, and plain jeans and a tank top, and eyed Clem with confusion.
“What’s going on?”
“You tell me, Emily,” Clem demanded. “What happened last night?”
“What are you talking about?”
Drake had to give Emily credit. She feigned ignorance while lying through her teeth, and whether Clem would believe her was anyone’s guess. If she offered me that bland and confused expression, I’d believe her. Clem gazed at her as though trying hard to determine if she played at being ignorant or lied about it.
“Toombs and his fucking asbestos suit,” Clem snapped. “A rifle. A fire no experienced fire investigator can explain.”
“If they can’t explain it, how in the hell can I?”
Clem threw up his hands. “I smell you two all over this,” he growled. “I know you were out there. I know Toombs was, too. I’ll get fingerprints off the rifle, and I know they’ll be Toombs’. But just exactly how all this shit comes together, I have no idea. And obviously, you aren’t going to tell me.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Emily replied, not looking at Drake. “We were here all night.”
“Sure, you were.” Clem glared at Drake. “Just what are you, man? You show up out of nowhere, you got no papers, no history, you heal impossibly fast, and you got the most sensible woman I know under your spell.”
“You got it backward,” Drake replied calmly. “I’m under hers.”
“What are you? Where did you come from?”
Drake met his hot gaze. “You don’t want to know. You really don’t.”
Swearing violently, Clem stalked away from him, his hands on his hips. He stopped with his back to them and rubbed his forehead with his fingers for a few moments. “Look,” he said, calmer, but didn’t turn around. “Your business is your business. You love Emily, and that’s great. Toombs is bad news, but you gotta understand, Drake, you have to obey the law.”
He finally turned and met Drake’s eyes.
“There’s no one who has more respect for the law than me,” Drake replied softly. “But I will do anything, and I mean, anything, to keep Emily safe. Sometimes, you know; sometimes the law can get in the way of that.”
Clem sighed. “You really are not going to tell me what you did last night. Nor what you are.”
“Just know that I’m one of the good guys.”
Rolling his eyes, Clem shook his head. “While I believe you, I also don’t believe you. But whatever. If I catch you doing something you shouldn’t—you, too, Emily—I will have you both in my jail. So, watch your Ps and Qs.”
He stormed, swearing, from the house and slammed the door behind him.
Chapter Seventeen
“Oookay,” Emily breathed. “We just pissed off our greatest ally.”
Drake went to the window and looked out, Emily suspecting he watched Clem drive away.
“He’ll be all right,” Drake said, turning. “He’s angry because he’s confused. If he had the answers, he wouldn’t be so testy.”
“But we can’t give him those answers. He can’t know what you are.”
“That’s true. I think he knows I’m not fully human, however.”
Needing coffee desperately, Emily tore her towel from her hair, tossed it indifferently onto her chair, and went into the kitchen. Brewing it, she eyed Drake as he followed her, and sat in a kitchen chair. Though she seldom ate breakfast, hunger gnawed at her stomach. “He’ll get over it.”
“Will he? Or will he pursue this until he gets his answers.”
Emily pondered the problem of Clem as the coffee brewed, putting herself in his position. “I think we could trust him with the truth,” she said at last. “He’d go wild at first, then once he calmed down, he’d be okay with it.”
Drake shook his head. �
�That may be true, but I’ll be in deeper trouble with the elders than I already am.”
“How will they know? Are they going to fly down here and check up on you?”
He snorted. “They might.”
“Look, all I’m saying is that we trust Clem with what you are if we have to. If we don’t have to, it’ll all blow over.”
Thinking she’d get fat if she kept eating bacon, Emily decided to fix oatmeal for breakfast. But when Drake saw what she was preparing, he rebelled.
“Am I a goat?” he demanded, staring at the oatmeal in the bowls. “I’m a predator, a hunter. I need meat.”
Emily shrugged. “You know where the bacon is.”
Thus, Drake fried bacon in a pan while Emily placidly ate her oatmeal. “When your arteries clog with all that bacon fat, you’ll wish you’d eaten more oatmeal. It lowers cholesterol.”
“I don’t get clogged arteries.”
“Of course, you don’t.”
Under his scowl, Emily smirked, then realized he was probably right. He didn’t get infections, no flesh-eating bacteria for him, no sepsis—so why should he endure a heart attack? “I wish I were born a dragon,” she mused.
“And live in a cave with no cable TV, ice and snow all around you, and you can’t live the way you were born to and fly?”
“You make it sound so romantic. Okay, I’ll stick with the risk of plaque in my arteries and eat oatmeal.”
As Drake ate his bacon, Emily kissed him, then went to her office to work. Her injury put her behind by a few days, but she planned to get it finished within a day or two. Thinking of her arm, she knew it was time to get her stitches removed. Picking up where she left off, she wrote through the day with only short breaks to use the bathroom and eat lunch.
“Anything going on?” she asked Drake as she emerged from her office for a short time.
“Jim and Mary’s kids got a new puppy,” he said, lying on the couch, watching television. “They were over showing it to me.”
“They didn’t let me get one for them?”
“Guess not.”
Emily eyed him. “And you didn’t freak the poor thing out?”
“Nope. Licked my face. I think that’s the first canine to ever lick a dragon.”
“I can be a bitch, but I’m not a canine,” Emily commented, “and I’ll lick you all over.”
Drake snickered. “Come here then.”
Wrinkling her nose, Emily went back to her office. “Later, sexy thing. Some of us work around here.”
She wrote until dusk and emerged, tired but satisfied, from her room to find Drake in the backyard. He had started a fire in the grill and sat in a lawn chair watching the stars come out one by one. Emily put her arms around him from behind and kissed his neck.
“I was just thinking of my friends,” he said. “Wherever they are, here in the south, those stars are shining down on them.”
“I’d like to meet them.”
“We’re supposed to get together one year to the day from when we were exiled.” Drake lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “In a town called Niagara Falls.”
“I hope I’m invited,” Emily told him, resting her chin on his shoulder. “I’ve never been to Niagara Falls.”
He turned his head slightly to meet her eyes. “I want my friends to meet you.”
“It’s a very busy place from what I’ve heard,” Emily went on. “Tourist town. Honeymoon destination.”
“That’s why we selected it,” Drake replied. “We wouldn’t stand out.”
“I just hope you can find one another.”
Drake smiled slightly. “We will.”
Straightening, Emily pulled another lawn chair over to him and sat down. “So, what’s going on the grill?”
“Steaks. I thought you’d like that.”
“You know it.”
Drake’s cooking skills might be limited, but Emily discovered Drake knew his way around a fire. Comes with the territory, I guess. The steaks were cooked perfectly, and he had prepared salad as well as potato chips. “Chips?” she asked, puzzled.
Drake grinned sheepishly. “I really like them. I’ve never had them until I came to your house.”
“They are good,” she admitted. “For a food that was created in a lab.”
She laughed at his confusion, and the way he suddenly stared at the chips on his plate. “I’m kidding. Well, mostly kidding. But there is a science behind how the flavors are created.”
Shrugging, Drake munched his chips. “I don’t care. I suppose these aren’t healthy for you, either?”
“Nope. That cholesterol thing again.”
“But they are sooo good.”
Completing the project, Emily sent it to her client via e-mail and sat back in her chair. “Okay, dude, I hope you like it,” she muttered.
After shutting down her computer, she left her office, stretching the kinks from her back. Drake lay, as usual, on the couch wearing only his jeans. As she never got tired of seeing his muscles rippling when he moved, the contours of his six-pack abs, Emily made no protest. Bending, she kissed him.
“What are you watching?”
“I think it’s called Pale Rider,” Drake replied. “I wonder if I could ever ride a horse.”
She laughed. “That I’d like to see. A dragon on a horse.”
The doorbell rang and instantly silenced her humor. Though Toombs hadn’t been lurking around, as far as Drake could tell, his threat was never far from Emily’s thoughts. Crossing the room, she peered through the window. “A delivery guy.”
Shutting off the alarm system and unlocking the door, Emily opened it. “Hi.”
“I have a delivery for Miss Emily Winslow,” the guy in the uniform said. “Will you sign for it?”
Though she hadn’t expected anything from anyone, Emily’s first thought was that one of her clients had sent her the details of a new project. But she interacted with them on the phone and through e-mail. The package was shaped like a flat box inside a bubble envelope. The return address appeared to be from Amazon.
“Thanks.”
She closed the door and locked it, then reset the alarm. Hefting the package, she shrugged, meeting Drake’s curious eyes. “Maybe a happy client sent me a present.”
Cutting open the bubble envelope, she sat down and pulled the box out. Plain, unadorned cardboard, she flipped open the lid.
Emily had never been the kind of woman who screamed when shocked and horrified. Yet, she screamed now and flung the box from her. The terrible object inside landed on the carpet, and lay there, stinking and putrefied, and almost seeming to stare at her.
Drake was beside her before the object hit the floor, holding her close to his shoulder as she shuddered, groaning, crying, “Oh, my God, oh, my God.”
“Hush, baby, hush,” he murmured, stroking her hair. “It’s okay. I’m here; it’s okay.”
His soothing hands and voice worked. Emily finally calmed, drawing in one ragged breath after another. “Oh, shit, what did that man do?” she whispered.
Turning, Drake looked at the penis on the carpet, and Emily forced herself to look as well. “If I were to guess,” he said slowly, “he cut that off someone who was already dead.”
Emily closed her eyes. “Please. Will you put it back in the box?”
He kissed her, then left her side to do what she asked. Once put away, the awful reek seemed to also pass, but Emily didn’t think she’d be getting that smell out of her nose anytime soon. “Thank you.”
Opening windows to air the house out, Drake handed Emily her cell phone. “You’d better call Clem.”
Her hands shook so hard that it took three tries before she clicked his number. Listening to it ring, she thought to ask Drake for a glass of water to ease her dry throat. As though reading her mind, he brought her a glass. She took a swallow, then Clem answered.
“You’d better get over here,” she told him. “I got a present from our friend.”
“Shit,” Clem s
napped. “What is it?”
Swallowing hard, she looked at the harmless-looking box. “What I think is a human penis.”
“Lord, have mercy.” His voice sounded more shocked than Emily’s. “I’ll be right there with the crime scene guys.”
Emily clicked the phone off. “I can’t sit in here with that thing. Will you sit outside with me?”
“You know I will.”
Side by side, Emily sat with Drake on the front porch, watching the kids across the street play with their new puppy. It yapped and bounced, jumping on the laughing kids, and Emily couldn’t help but wonder if that innocent creature would be sacrificed the way its predecessor was.
Clem and two police cruisers arrived with lights and sirens, chasing the kids onto their front porch. A big crime scene van also pulled up in front of Emily’s house even before Clem got out of his vehicle. He took one look at Emily’s bleak expression, then passed them both and went into the house.
The officers followed, then the tech guys carrying huge cases, and Emily clutched Drake’s hand without speaking. Naturally, the neighbors watched the drama from their driveways and lawns, making Emily feel like a caged animal in a zoo. After a length of time, Clem emerged from the house and stood for a moment looking back at the neighbors.
“The techs think it came from someone who was already dead,” he told Emily and Drake. “There’s no indication it was cut off while the guy was alive, but the coroner will have to make the determination.”
“Where in the hell would he get a body to cut—that—off it?” Emily asked, her voice shaking.
“I’m guessing a morgue,” Clem replied. “Whoever owned it had been dead for a couple of days.”
Putting her face in her hands, Emily felt Drake’s hand on her back, offering what comfort he could. “I just want all this to be over. Why can’t it be over?”
“He’s trying to scare you.”
“Well, fuck, Clem, it’s working.”
He drew in a deep breath. “I know, kid. We’ll get him.”
Lifting her face, Emily looked around at the staring, gossiping neighbors and said, her voice low, “He might hurt one of them. Maybe a kid. You know he’s capable of it.”
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