by Riley Storm
“I tried to do this the easy way,” he warned. “But if you try to fight me, it will get messy. Am I understood?”
“Of course not,” she fired back. “Nobody understands, because you haven’t explained anything. You’re not making any sense, Victor. You’re talking as if we’re all aware of what you mean, but none of us has a clue.”
“You do,” he said, levelling an accusatory finger. “I can see it in your eyes. Thief. You’re no different.”
Then he was gone.
Cheryl stood rooted to the spot for several moments, taking in deep breaths, steadying herself. She’d never held her ground in such a heated argument before, and the adrenaline flowing through her system was an unusual feeling.
But she could use it.
Darting into the hallway, she headed for the exit. She wasn’t about to let him have the last word. Not after he’d uttered a threat like that to her. Nor after accusing her of something that she wasn’t.
She caught up to him at the elevators to the parking garage attached to one level of the sprawling municipal offices building. He’d pressed the button to go up.
“Victor.”
He spun to face her. “You do—”
“No,” she spat, holding up a finger. “I’m talking here.”
Eyebrows shot up as she cut him off icily. There might have been humor dancing in his eyes, but Cheryl didn’t notice, nor did she care. She was going to say her piece.
“I don’t know what you think you know about me, my team, or this town,” she snapped as the elevator dinged. “But whatever it is, you’ve got us all wrong. You and Aaric both, you’re misjudging us. We’re not thieves, we’re not stealing from you. Hell, you came to us! Whatever is going on, tell me, and we can work through it together. This doesn’t have to go this way.”
Victor laughed. He laughed, at her. Cheryl had never been so incensed in her life.
“If you want to know, I suggest you go ask your ancestors,” he said cryptically, then backed into the open elevator.
“What does that mean?” she half-shouted. “You’re not making any sense.”
“Think harder than, thief.”
The doors closed, leaving her a little upset, a lot angry, but most of all, thoroughly confused.
Victor was after her. Personally. Except she had no idea who he was, or what he was talking about.
“What the hell am I supposed to do now?” she moaned at the blank gray metal doors.
In her mind, she could see her new promotion and her dreams of sticking it to her parents all going up in smoke.
Chapter 4
Victor arrived back at Drakon Keep like a tsunami.
“Aaric!” he bellowed, his voice thundering through the empty hallways. “I know you’re here, brother,” he spat, finally unleashing the full anger he’d kept at bay around Cheryl.
He knew she thought he’d been an ass to her, and though he didn’t care, at one point he’d noticed her step away from him as if she’d feared for her own safety. That just contributed to his fury at his fellow dragon shifter. How dare he do this to him, to the point where a human, even one who looked so like her, was afraid of him?
“Victor?”
“You want no part in this, Francis,” he growled as the main steward of the Keep appeared several moments later. “This is between Aaric and me. It will be dangerous to you.”
“Aaric!” he shouted again, his voice ringing out through the massive hallway that led straight into the heart of the Keep. The massive arched ceilings overhead took his voice and flung it all about.
Aaric would hear him. And he would come. When he did, Victor would be ready.
“Are you sure there’s no way that I may be—”
Francis’ voice cut off abruptly as a wall of water appeared in front of him, blocking the doorway in which he stood.
Victor turned to fix the human with a glare to emphasize his point. Instead of retreating, however, the steward sighed and then pushed his head through the wall until his face appeared on Victor’s side.
“I’ll take that as a no,” he said, then withdrew before Victor could get in the last word.
Victor took the anger at that and turned it on his “brother”, calling out his name once more.
“I heard you the first time.”
The water dragon spun at the voice behind him. There he was. The bastard who had set him up.
“You knew about this!” he accused, striding forward. “You knew. That’s why you woke me. That’s why you put me in charge of this project. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a joke. All a joke. That’s all you think of me, that I’m a joke, don’t you!” he howled.
The room was growing humid as water was drawn in toward the enraged dragon, thickening the atmosphere in the entire room. Everywhere, that is, except for a small circle around Aaric where the air shimmered with barely restrained heat.
Fire versus water. The oldest of battles.
“I told you already, Victor. It was a mistake. We didn’t know what we were doing and we screwed up. We made the mistake. This isn’t about you.”
“Yes, it is,” he said bitterly. “I believed you, you know. I actually believed you. Your logic made sense. But did you really think I wouldn’t see through your lies after doing your work for you today? That I wouldn’t recognize her?”
Aaric thrust both hands out to the side, palms up. “Victor, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Her,” he hissed. “Your little project manager with the town. The one you want me to work with.”
“Cheryl?” Aaric asked, the calm manner with which he spoke stirring the waters even more between them. “What about her?”
“It’s her!” Victor screamed. “How can you not see that? It’s her! You knew that, and you woke me so I would have to deal with her while you laughed behind my back!”
The water in the room abruptly swept toward him at the same instant he thrust his hands forward, adding his own water to the mix. A giant wave crashed over Aaric and washed him right out the doors of the Keep.
Victor took two steps and then launched himself forward off the steps that led back down to the driveway. He landed, barely flexing his knees.
Fifty feet away, Aaric was standing up as steam billowed around him, the strong winds catching the cloud and dissipating it in seconds.
“That was uncalled for, brother,” Aaric growled.
“Says you.”
Victor’s right hand came up and around as he knelt, slamming the fist into the concrete. Water pooled up from the earth under Aaric and erupted like a geyser. It immediately hissed into steam as Aaric called upon his fire to protect him.
There was a lot that dragons could do with the control of their elements. Aaric could counter any water attack given proper preparation, just as Victor could do the same for fire. What neither of them could control, however, was the sheer physical force that came with the attack.
The upthrust of water caught Aaric and flipped him backward. Victor hit him in mid-air with another blast of liquid. The force of both tossed him thirty feet in the air and a hundred feet back. The fire dragon hit the ground, bouncing and rolling, leaving a line of scorched grass where his exposed skin made contact with the ground.
“You put me up to this!” Victor screamed, feeding off his shame and embarrassment, off memories he wished he didn’t have as he charged after the fire dragon. “Why? What did I ever do to you?”
He blasted Aaric again. The fire dragon crouched, but he was unable to prepare entirely for the strength of the stream of water. Much of it turned to steam, but more of it wrapped its tendrils around his body, tightening, squeezing, invading his pores, his ears and nose.
Aaric screamed in pain as Victor sank his power in deep. Tears flowed down his face.
He could no longer see the lush grounds of Drakon Keep. Victor was elsewhere now. In front of him was the thick figure of a woman with silvery-white hair and laughing brown eyes that danced as she waggled a finge
r and told him it was too late. That he couldn’t back out now.
Water lashed out from his hands, a recreation of what he’d wanted to do to her back then. It flowed around her and slipped into every opening on her body. He pushed with his mind and the water opened her pores and flooded her body. She began to shake, to tremble and writhe violently as she quite literally drowned in front of him.
He could see it now. This was what he’d wanted to do to her. The retribution he’d longed to wreak, but had been unable, his hands restrained by the elders.
Well, there were no elders now, and Victor could have his revenge! Nobody could stop him. She would pay for what she’d done to him. Nobody would laugh at him. Not anymore.
The woman rose in the air as he lifted her clear, the water pooling underneath her, constrained by his will. By him. He was in charge!
The screams of the woman filled his ears, her long dress flowing, so unlike the suit he’d seen her in early that day. Victor started to smile as he knew the end would be soon. It was almost here.
But the screams grew louder, and deeper. They merged together until they became one terrible roar. At the same time, the woman’s body began to glow.
No! What’s going on! She’s got to die. She must die!
The light intensified and he watched in horror as the water he was pouring into her was pushed back out of her body by a glowing aura of fire. It countered his attack in a trillion places, emerging from under her skin like a protective layer, a shield that covered every inch of her body.
Water met that fire and flashed to steam so rapidly that in seconds, she was obscured from his view.
There was a dull thud and a blast of steam raced out and over him. Victor looked around wildly, trying to find her. He sucked in all the moisture in the air and the steam vanished faster than the wind could blow it away.
A slight vibration in the earth was his only warning. He spun to meet the attack, but all he saw was a fire-wreathed fist a moment before it slammed into his jaw.
Victor flew back, went ass over head as he rolled until he came to a stop on his back, staring up at the afternoon sky. Dark clouds were rolling in, he noticed, reaching out to feel the weather. Yes, as he’d thought, a storm would be following shortly behind.
A rainstorm. Fall was here now, and there would be many of those to come, he thought with a detached smile. Fall was his second favorite season after spring. It was always so wet, so proper. He loved it.
A face appeared over him, blocking the sky.
“Are you done yet?” Aaric asked angrily, his skin all blotched and red. “Or do we need to keep going?”
One hand came into Victor’s view, fingers outstretched, ready to help him up.
“I don’t understand,” Victor moaned. “What did I ever do to you?”
“Nothing,” Aaric said. “I swear, whatever happened, it’s a coincidence. Now, if you want, you can take my hand, and we’ll go inside and talk about it. Or, I can hit you with this, and then we’ll talk while you recover.”
His other hand moved into view and Victor flinched away at the mini sun contained in his palm. That would hurt if he was hit with it. It would hurt a lot.
Victor sighed and reached for the open hand. What other choice did he have?
Chapter 5
Cheryl paused outside the meeting room, dreading what was about to come.
After the fiasco of their first meeting with Victor, she’d sent them off to work on other tasks under the guise of them needing to give Victor some time to think of a counter-proposal she’d given him after talking privately.
It was a lie and she suspected that Tanya, and possibly Stephen, had seen right through it. What else was she supposed to have done? The Outreach Center was going to be the crowning jewel in the last ten years of Plymouth Falls’ development, if not more. The idea that it could just so suddenly go up in smoke, flushed away by the words of a man who she knew was on some sort of petty agenda was, to say the least, shocking. Nobody was ready to hear that.
But she had to tell them. The lie could only go on for so long. She’d told it to buy herself some time, time to regroup, to hopefully hear back from Victor about the changes, and try to salvage as much as possible.
If I can just get him to agree to fifty-percent reduction, I can save this. I’ll tell them the Drakons initially wanted twenty-five, but I managed to get them up to fifty. It’s still a huge project at that size. Nobody will complain too much, lest we risk losing that as well. I can make them believe it’s still at risk, that only my skills are keeping it together.
Hopefully. All of that, of course, was predicated on her ability to get Victor to come to the negotiating table and come up from his paltry ten percent of the original size of the project.
Which seems unlikely.
Steeling herself with a deep breath, Cheryl pushed open the door. There was no point in standing around outside for much longer. It was going to happen, so she may as well get it over with.
“Hello everyone,” she said with a smile. At least she didn’t have to force that.
As much as she was dreading telling them what was going on, Cheryl truly liked every member of her team. They were good, solid people who knew their jobs and weren’t afraid to work hard at them.
“Thanks for coming,” she said, sitting down.
When she didn’t open her laptop or pull out any papers, the others exchanged glances with one another. They knew this wasn’t going to be good.
“How bad?” Liz asked, the first to speak.
That surprised her because Liz was usually the quietest of the group. Cheryl hadn’t expected her to take the lead on this, and her respect for the woman—also the youngest—grew several levels right then and there.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” she said. Not again, at least. “It’s bad. Really bad. I don’t know what came up with the Drakon family, but they are pulling the plug from under this in everything but name. It wouldn’t surprise me if they try to fully cancel it after we quite rightly express our shock and outrage.”
“Word has it you already did that.”
She looked at Stephen. There was nothing accusatory in his tone. Just a quest for more information.
“I should have known that the rumor mill would spread that around,” she said with a tiny sliver of a laugh, diffusing any tension, letting Stephen know she wasn’t taking his words personally.
The others relaxed. “I heard you went for the throat,” Tanya said, chiming in for the first time. “No holds barred.”
“What were you guys doing, standing outside the room?” she said, feeling slightly embarrassed at the pride all three of them were now radiating toward her. What was going on?
“We work in an office, Cheryl. You know someone is always nearby. Especially when voices get raised.”
“I told him how I felt about his decision to downsize, yes,” she admitted, uncomfortable at the attention. “I was…not happy about it.”
“He didn’t relent, did he?” Liz asked, drumming fingers on the tabletop. When Cheryl shook her head, Liz nodded in understanding. “How badly is he fucking us over, then?”
Liz put a slight emphasis on the word us, which Cheryl knew meant more than just those in the room and the people directly involved in the project. Liz was talking about Plymouth Falls as a whole. The entire town would stand to benefit from the project, but now the Drakons were looking at pulling back from it and the two couldn’t do it all themselves. The funds simply weren’t there.
“Badly,” she said with a sigh. “Worse than your scariest projections.”
Silence reigned for a long time until Stephen broke it, asking the question they all wanted to know the answer to. “How much worse?”
“He wants to slash it to ten percent of the original size and budget.”
Moans and groans erupted from her team. Stephen banged his closed fist on the table. Liz bent over, resting her forehead on her arms as she buried her face in them. Tanya sagged backward i
n her chair, looking skyward.
“I know,” she said. “I know. I…I wasn’t going to tell you how bad,” she admitted. “Because I want to try and convince him to change his mind. I still think there’s a chance.”
“How good of one?” Liz interrupted.
“Not very,” she said, wondering how the meeting had gone so off-course from what she’d planned. “But definitely still one. If we can get them to re-commit to say, fifty percent of the original, that’s still very significant. I don’t like it any more than you do, but I think we all know that getting them to go back to the original plans isn’t likely. Not given the way Victor treated us the other day.”
She felt her blood flow faster at the memory of him. Of being cloistered in the small office so close to him. He’d been right there just a few feet away from her, the warm air the only thing that had been between them. It was hard to forget a memory like that. Not when it was of him. So big, so powerful. Such a jerk.
And yet, so very memorable.
Cheryl cursed herself for twisting the memory. She couldn’t get her mind off of his body. It was like her brain wanted to forget what he’d been saying, as confusing and rude as it was, and instead focus on something pleasant. So, it had chosen Victor’s attractiveness and latched on to that.
I am not attracted to him! I’m not!
With that issue settled, she returned her attention to her team.
“So what now?” Stephen wanted to know. “How do we turn this around? If we’re the team associated with losing this project, you know we’re not going to be long for our jobs. We need to find a way to market this as a win.”
It bothered her to hear her team talking about this in terms of political capital. Thinking about how to save their jobs, instead of doing their jobs. It wasn’t like they had done anything to jeopardize the project. It was all being done because of something in Victor and Aaric’s end.
Something came up. What a bullshit line.
“Now we wait,” she said. “We approach this as a unified front. Victor will be back to discuss his new plans shortly, I’m sure. Then we start to pick him apart. Find reasons why it would be better for everyone if we keep the project larger. Salvage what we can. This isn’t any of our faults. Whatever is happening, is happening on their end. We have to stick together and get as many concessions from them as possible.”