by Lola Gabriel
A prickle of alarm coursed through her body as something else occurred to her. Was that why he had asked Anders to stay with them? To keep her distracted from the fact that he was watching her? He had confessed to having eyes on her for months, so why would he stop now?
Sawyer felt like a double fool, her mind weaving a conspiracy theory that involved Anders being a ploy all along, and she was finding it difficult to breathe. She sank onto the chair beside the computer and eyed the device, unsure if she wanted to open it again, but the need to learn what she had wrapped herself up in was too much to bear.
You’ve come this far, she thought, chewing on the insides of her cheeks to keep herself from screaming. You may as well go the whole way.
Slowly, Sawyer opened the laptop and began to read her history, pulling up the pages she had found regarding the fires. She had one more lead to investigate, and if her hunch was right, it could blow the case wide open.
Unlike the fires in Landerneau, there was no reason to the latest ones in New York City. She and Jericho had come to learn that the ones created in France had not been functional, but rather acts of rage, unfettered and unscripted. The dragon shifter, Ove, had apparently lost control, although what had caused it, she had never learned. In the grand scheme of things, she still knew nothing about what made the dragons tick or why they existed.
No matter what Vander says, I can’t get on board with the evil witch’s curse.
But there was something different about these blazes, and Sawyer could feel it in her bones.
I can’t use this computer, she thought, drumming her fingers against the keyboard, but what choice did she have? If Vander was watching her, he would watch her anywhere she went. The best she could do was cover her tracks the best way she knew how.
Sawyer opened a private browser window and pulled a tinted lip gloss from her pocket, covering the webcam, just in case. Then she continued the search into the eight places that had been set on fire. Well, she already knew about Anders’ building, so there were seven places left to check out.
The first had been a grocery store in Harlem. It was a small chain, owned by Parasol Foods.
The second place was a jewelry store on the Upper East Side, owned by Hummingbird Inc.
As she went down the list, she noted the names of the owners of each business or property that had been targeted. There appeared to be no relation between any of the companies involved, and Sawyer felt a sinking in her heart as she finished her search. She had been so sure there was a correlation between them all, but it was plain to see that she was wrong.
So I’m back to square one, she thought, her eyes scanning the list again to see if she had missed anything. The names were not related in the least. There was no connection. Unless…
Her heart began to pound, and she reopened the private browser, typing in a search for Parasol Foods. Instantly, her breath caught in her throat, but she was not finished. As she checked on each company that had been targeted, Sawyer grew dizzier.
This has to be a sick coincidence. There is no way.
But it was. The world wide web did not lie in this instance.
Parasol Foods, Hummingbird Inc., and two others were owned by the umbrella company, Williams Industries. The drug store and pharmacy that had been hit were owned by Williams Pharmaceuticals. And the penthouse was owned by Anders Williams.
“No,” she mumbled, jumping to her feet and backing away from the computer. “That’s a weird coincidence. Williams is a popular name.” She willed herself to sit down and look further, despite her desire to run away from the computer.
You just have Anders in mind, she reasoned. There’s no way he’s involved in this dragon mess. He wouldn’t have his own condo set on fire while you were in it… would he?
The rich had done much worse for insurance money; why should he be any different?
Swallowing the bile in her throat, Sawyer forced her fingers to search for the umbrella companies, and what she saw made her swoon.
“I have five brothers,” Anders had said.
The words ricocheted in her head like pellets, and there was an uncanny family resemblance between Titus, Marcus, and Anders Williams, the billionaire brothers who owned half the world. Cassius owned the other half, and…
Sawyer choked.
“Of course. Ansel Williams,” she muttered to herself. “The world champion boxer.”
She needed to talk to Anders, to understand if he was the target or the instigator. Had she been sleeping with a killer? Or was he somehow tangled up in this mess with her?
“I brought you some chamomile tea,” Vander announced from behind her, and Sawyer yelped in surprise, slamming the laptop closed. He eyed her. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he chirped. “But I can see you need something to calm your nerves. If you need something stronger, I’ll have Susie bring you a Xanax.”
Sawyer thought about it for half a second before shaking her head. She had a very important decision to make; trust Vander and ask him about Anders, or continue her investigation on her own. Without contacts or resources, she had nothing but a computer and her suspicions. At least with Vander, she had some way to keep going… even if he was stalking her.
You both have your reasons for wanting to know the truth about what’s happening, she reminded herself. You can’t fault him for protecting his investment.
“What do you know about Anders Williams?” she asked.
“Sawyer!” Vander moaned. “This is becoming tiresome—”
“It’s important,” she interjected. “I think he’s involved in this somehow.”
Vander’s face twisted into a mask of confusion, first amused and then perplexed. “Anders? Why?”
“I found a connection between the fires. Every place targeted belonged to a company owned by one of the Williams brothers.”
Vander’s face registered shock. “You think they arranged to have their businesses destroyed for insurance?”
“It’s hard to say. They are such small places, and the trickle upward would be minuscule,” Sawyer admitted. “It seems like a lot of work for not that much of a payout. Not only that, but we’re talking about a family in cahoots. I think that the dragons are targeting them.”
Vander sank down, folding his hands over his lap, and Sawyer could see the wheels turning in his head.
“This… this is huge,” he mumbled. “But what about France?”
“Over the years,” Sawyer explained, “there have been rash fires like this one. When we found that dragon, he had gone mad. I suspect that when it happens typically, it is just a loss of control on the part of the beast. This is different. It’s in the city and widely publicized. Someone wants the brothers to know they are being targeted.”
“We need to find out why,” Vander said, sitting up excitedly. “And then we can find them and end them!”
“Do you know where Anders has gone?” Vander’s gaze darted away, and Sawyer had a feeling he knew exactly where the lawyer had gone. “Vander, Anders and his brothers could be in danger. We need to find them and get them out of harm’s way! We need to find out what they know!”
“He took his jet to England.”
Sawyer blinked and resisted the urge to ask him how he knew that, fearing the answer. “Do you know where in England?”
“I… I can track his GPS,” Vander mumbled, and Sawyer shuddered, partially grateful he was such a stalker but mostly disgusted with him.
This is for his own good, she thought. I need to find him.
“I’ll have my pilot get the plane ready,” Vander offered, leaping to his feet with renewed vigor. “We can leave—”
“You’re not coming,” Sawyer said flatly.
“What?”
“God forbid we see a dragon. What are you going to do?”
Vander’s eyes grew wide. “I told you, I was attacked by a dragon!” he snapped defensively.
“And you were protected by your guards,” she reminded him. “I have to worry abou
t protecting myself. I can’t worry about you, too.” He stared at her through narrowed eyes, and Sawyer could see he was ready to argue, but she shrugged her shoulders. “You can either agree, or I’ll go home right now and find another way to talk to Anders. You are not coming with me.”
Vander’s irises shadowed, and he nodded stiffly.
“All right,” he agreed tersely. “I’ll let the pilot know.” He turned to leave her.
“Where in England has he gone?”
“A place in the middle of nowhere. It’s called Misty Woods, way in the north.”
Sawyer waited until Vander disappeared again and opened the laptop. Now she needed to learn everything she could about Misty Woods.
16
Staring at the castle, Anders was filled with a sense of insignificance he had not known in eons. Leaving Misty Woods had been an easy decision, not only for him but also for his brothers. Standing before the crumbling mass, he wanted nothing more than to turn back and forget he had ever come.
“Gazing at it like that won’t make it go away,” Max quipped, and Anders glanced up as his brother approached, a lazy grin on his face.
“Are you sure?” he sighed. “Maybe if we stare long enough…”
“Come in,” Max laughed, clapping him on his back. “Father has passed out, so he likely won’t sense you inside.”
It was the word ‘likely’ that bothered Anders the most.
“I should have met you in one of the towns nearby,” he grumbled, more to himself than Max, but his brother heard him all the same and shook his head.
“No,” he replied. “You need to be here to understand what happened.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It is.”
For three days, the brothers had been in close contact, sharing whatever information they had learned. Anders had gone to Switzerland himself, trying to learn more about the mysterious men who had come and gone, apparently with the most innocent of their kind. He had learned as little as Max, but that didn’t stop him from accessing passport records to see if anything popped up.
It was a grueling and futile effort, less than the chance of finding a needle in a haystack, for if they were dealing with a weyr of dragons, they wouldn’t use passports.
The previous night, he had sat, rubbing his eyes, exhausted and ready to scream from his hotel room in La Claustra, near the Sasso San Gottardo. He fought against every fiber of his being, which wanted to call Sawyer, knowing that any contact he made would be met with rebuff. But the longing to merely hear her voice was driving him crazy.
He had caved, reaching for the phone just as Max texted him.
I know who they are now, the message read. You need to come to Misty Woods.
Anders was not sure which sentence bothered him more. Probably the latter. Nothing good had ever come from within the walls of that castle. But he was hardly in any position to argue, not if he wanted to learn the truth and take down the rivals who had destroyed his home and almost killed his lover.
“Where are we going?” he demanded as his brother led the way through the dark chambers of the castle, through the back halls. “This goes to the—”
“I started thinking about what the old man at Airolo said about the strangers who had come to town.”
They continued through the dank halls, and Anders felt a shiver of apprehension slide through him. “Max, why are we going—”
“Blonde, blue-eyed, and built like brick shithouses, I think he said,” Max continued, as if his brother had not spoken. “And it reminded me of something.” He pulled on a heavy door, and he grabbed for a mounted torch before starting into the bowels of the castle.
“Max, I don’t want to go—”
“Who else was in the castle with us that night, Anders?”
“The night that Opal laid the curse?”
“Yes. Who did we have dying in the dungeons?”
Anders froze in his tracks, his jaw dropping in shock. “Northmen! Prisoners!”
Max turned and nodded his head, the eerie glow of light casting a strange shadow on the curved stairwell. “But what happened to them?”
“They died, presumably,” Anders whispered, but he had never given it any thought. He had never given them another thought.
“Why would they have died?” Max asked, gesturing for him to follow, and Anders gulped the lump of sick forming in his throat. “No one else inside the castle died. We were all transformed—the children, the women. Why not them, too?”
“Surely someone must have gone to check on them at some point!” Anders choked, but the words sounded empty to his ears.
“You and I certainly didn’t. If anyone had, someone would have sounded the alarm as to what had happened.”
“This is a ridiculous theory, Max!” Anders tried to argue. “Are you suggesting that they laid in wait for seven centuries? Why would they do that if they have been around this long?”
“I don’t know why,” Max confessed. “I would guess that they lack the same power we have, whether because they were near death or because the ones closest to Opal got the full effect of her wrath. But they are here now, and we must find them.”
“Those damned Northmen! Even after all this time!”
Max snickered, and they ventured into the depth of the castle, his torch illuminating the naked cells, barren of anything but the suffering that had seeped into the walls all those battles ago.
“You see?” Max pointed out. “There are no bones, no remnants of any man being down here. I checked with Marcus. There were six here that night. Just as there are six of us.”
“If they are weaker, we will subdue them,” Anders said reassuringly. “They are sloppy, setting fires at random. At least one is in New York. There must be a way for me to draw him out.”
“Maybe,” Max replied. “But I think there’s a reason they are becoming so confident, Anders.”
“They’re growing stronger? But how—oh, shit!” Suddenly, it made sense why they had taken the women. “We have to find them!” Anders gasped. “We have to figure out what the hell they’re doing and stop them!”
“If it isn’t already too late,” Max mumbled tiredly. “I think we both know why they’ve taken the women. I can guess what they’re doing with the children. If this is what I think this is, they have a year on us already.”
They stared at one another in the eerie darkness, their faces an identical shade of frustration.
“They’re building an army, Max,” Anders choked out, “and we have no idea how to stop them.”
“I do,” said a third voice. “I know exactly how to stop them.”
The men whirled to look into the darkness.
“Who’s there?” Max called out, stepping forward to the light corridor. “Show yourself!”
But Anders instantly recognized the voice. It had been speaking to him in the fitful sleep he’d stolen over the past few days.
“Sawyer!” he cried at the sight of her, barely illuminated by the light from Max’s torch. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“You know about the dragons,” she breathed, stepping toward him with wide, scared eyes. “How did you learn about them?”
“What do you know about dragons?” Max asked curiously. “And who are you?”
Anders turned to give his brother a warning look. “You shouldn’t be here, Sawyer,” he said nervously, striding toward her. “It’s dark and cold—you’ll get sick.”
“Really?” Sawyer snapped. “You’re going to pretend you’re worried about me getting the flu right now?”
“Once upon a time, that would be able to kill you,” Max chimed, a note of amusement tinging his words.
Anders glared at him before pulling on Sawyer’s arm. “Come on,” he insisted. “Let’s get out of here. We can talk upstairs.”
“What is this place?” she demanded, wriggling free of his grasp. “Whose castle is this?”
“Sawyer, let’s go upstairs,” Anders said firmly, seizing
her arm. “Come on.” He did not release her until they had made their way up the stone steps and onto the main floor of the musty structure. “What are you doing here? How did you even know where to find me?”
“What are you doing here?” Sawyer retorted, folding her arms across her chest defensively. “You just left me at Vander’s without an explanation. You didn’t even have the decency to call?”
“I told Vander to tell you I’d be back in a few days,” Anders replied, casting Max a worried look. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
“You thought disappearing without a word would make me less worried?” she snapped. “How considerate of you!”
“I’ll just be upstairs,” Max muttered, slipping past the quarreling couple to make himself scarce.
“I didn’t leave you,” Anders replied softly, stepping toward her. He could read the hurt in her eyes, and he wished with all his being that he had not done it the way he had.
“Yeah? It sure looks like you did.”
“You’re wrong, Sawyer. I left to protect you. There are things you don’t understand… or at least I thought you didn’t understand.” He reached out to brush a strand of hair from her face, and she looked away, causing a stab of pain to run through his body.
“What do you know about the dragons, Anders?” Sawyer asked, visibly swallowing back her anger and disappointment, but she didn’t pull away. “Who are they?”
“I—” Anders started to deny that he knew anything about them, but as he stared into her face, he realized he couldn’t lie to her. From the minute he had laid eyes on her, he had known there was something magical about her, something he had never felt for anyone else. He wanted her to know everything about him, about his legacy and their fight, but he couldn’t afford to drag her into the middle of a war, especially not when she had almost died because of it.
What could he tell her except that he didn’t have enough answers, anyway?
“Why are they coming after you and your brothers?” she asked, surprising him.
“What?” Anders blinked and stared at her. “What do you mean they’re coming after us? How do you know that? What do you know about them?”