And you don’t want us to eat you, she thought.
“Of course. You have the most experience.” She placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him her most convincing smile.
He unlocked the heavy vault door, opening it for her. “You’re one of the good ones, Sabrina. Have a good night.”
She nodded her head and entered her father’s chambers. Flipping on the light, she removed her booties and padded across the main room in her socks. Avoiding her father’s bedroom, she made a beeline to his office. Aside from the mahogany desk and plush leather chair that were typical of an executive office, the place resembled a library more than a workspace. The walls were lined with books and scrolls that detailed the history of their race, her royal lineage, and the laws of her coven.
The tomes she was interested in rested on the top shelf, dusty and unused. Vampire reference manuals about other species. There was one on witches, another on the fae, and another labeled creatures of the sea. But it was the shifter volume she was interested in. She used one arm to hoist herself up and select the massive book from the shelf, cradling it as she returned her feet to the floor.
Positioning the book on the desk, she carefully opened it, the smell of aging parchment thick in her nostrils. Werewolves… shifters… bears… she skimmed the entries in the table of contents at the front of the book. All the way at the bottom, she found what she was looking for.
“Dragons,” she whispered, flipping to the referenced page. Before she said goodbye to Tobias forever, she had to know for sure that she didn’t have any other options. If she could have given her heart a voice, it would have sang its hope that somehow dragons were the exception to the rule, the one supernatural species vampires could coexist with. She tried not to get her hopes up as she flipped to the page specified.
She was surprised to find the entire section was only two pages long. She began to read, translating the old language in her head.
Although dragons are now thought to be extinct, the most ancient vampires remember a time long ago when they lived among us. Thought to be the most dangerous form of shifter, dragons hold the distinction of having originated as beasts, blessed with the ability to transform into men by the Greek goddess Circe. This is in sharp contrast to the werewolf, for example, whose species originated from humans cursed to become beasts.
Having evolved then from magical beasts, dragons share qualities of inherent magic similar to natural witches. Due to their potential for insurmountable power and their latent magical abilities, it is said that dragons were forbidden from mating outside their species.
Folklore from before vampires kept written records suggests the dragons left Earth for a new land before the great flood as a concession to Hera who did not approve of Circe’s creation. In any case, a suspected dragon should be considered dangerous to any coven and should be reported to the Forebears immediately.
Sabrina’s blood froze in her veins. She shut the book and took a step back. Forebears. Only the most serious threats to vampire kind were referred to them. One did not simply submit a form or send an email. The Forebears were the supreme ruling body for vampires, the eldest ones, the originals. Many rarely emerged from their underground castle, having chosen to sever their relationship with the outer world rather than veil what they were to adapt to modern living. They ruled from the center of a heavily forested and largely abandoned part of Eastern Europe, plucking villagers from the surrounding area at will. Reporting to the Forebears meant going to that godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere and risking life and limb to convey one’s message, possibly waking a vampire who’d gotten bored and decided to sleep for a year or two. She’d heard stories from her father about them. A tremble ran through her as if the ground beneath her feet were shaking.
Hastily, she returned the book to the shelf. Law or no law, she would never report Tobias to the Forebears or anyone else. She’d go to her grave protecting him. Once she was master, if any vampire suggested even an inkling of suspicion about what he was, she’d squash the idea immediately, even if she had to threaten, imprison, or kill them to do it. It was part of the reason she’d decided she must become master. There was no other way to protect him and his family but to rule.
It was the only way to deal with this mess. Tomorrow, when they met at the zoo, would be the last time she’d speak to him. She’d explain the situation and say her goodbyes. And then she would watch over him from afar, using her pull as master to keep him safe. It was the only way to keep him out of harm’s way and ensure he could continue to do what he’d been born to do—cure sick children.
She checked that everything in the room was exactly as it was when she came in and then returned to the sitting room, drawing her notebook from her pocket and beginning to sketch. Her father emerged from his bedroom a few moments later, dressed in only a robe.
“Sabrina, I didn’t know you were stopping by.”
She held up the notebook. “Sketching my new digs. I have a question about your office. Are you leaving the books?”
“No. I’ll be taking my personal library with me. Some have sentimental value. I can have copies made if you like.”
“Please. They would be invaluable.”
There was a knock at the door and her father crossed the room to open it. Sabrina watched a gorgeous human woman sashay into the room, her curves straining a low-cut red dress.
“Will you be joining me for breakfast?” her father asked.
Sabrina fidgeted when the dark-haired beauty met her eyes and pulled her hair off her neck. “I can feed two, if you want some. As long as you don’t take too much.”
Her father stared at the pulse under the human’s pale skin, his fangs elongating slowly. This was natural vampire behavior, but the feeling in her stomach wasn’t hunger. The room felt too hot suddenly. She got to her feet and strode toward the door.
“I already ate.” Her eyes flicked to her father. “I’ll be in the Star once you’ve fed.”
He didn’t respond to her. He couldn’t speak around his fangs. Instead, he struck, sinking his teeth into his willing victim.
Sabrina slipped out the door, leaving her father to finish his meal.
Chapter Seventeen
The day was sunny. Cold, snow-covered, but sunny. It was amazing what a difference a blue sky made. It might be thirty degrees outside, but with no wind and the bright rays baking his face, Tobias thought he could sense spring on the horizon like a song in the distance that was growing closer.
Sabrina arrived then, in front of the polar bear exhibit, her hood up, sheltering her face from view and also from the sun, he supposed. He’d seen her outside during the day before. Now he wondered if those times had been uncomfortable for her.
“Should we go inside?” he asked, glancing toward the nearest building.
“No. It’s safer here. The sun makes me weak, but it will kill other members of my coven, and there’s no place for a human spy to hide.” She looked around at the abandoned walkways and leaned up against the polar bear enclosure.
Tobias understood. It was noon on a Friday but cold for humans. They might have been the only ones at the zoo by the looks of things.
“Tell me what’s going on, Sabrina. Please.” He tried to keep his voice neutral, but emotion slipped through despite his best efforts.
“My coven is called Lamia. I don’t know if I told you that before.” She shrugged in her puffy coat. “You should probably know that. It’s the largest coven in North America.”
“The largest…” He couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.
“Next weekend, I’ll take over as master. I had to resign because it’s a full-time job leading a coven of that size. I can’t be a nurse and a master.”
“No?”
“No. And I sold my place. I’m moving into the tunnels after my coronation.”
“The tunnels?”
“My coven lives in a network of tunnels under the city. It’s important that I’m there for them, that I’m
one of them.” Her voice trailed off.
“It doesn’t sound like this is something you want to do. You love being a nurse, Sabrina. You love the daylight. You have a life. Are you sure you want to do this?”
Her chest expanded, and he heard a rush of breath flow from under the hood. “I am, Tobias. I… I feel this is something I have to do, not just for them but for us.”
“How could this possibly be for us?”
“I’ve been groomed for this since I was born. My father made sure the coven feared me so that my human side would never be questioned. This is my crown to take up. Once I rise, I’ll have the power to make sure the coven leaves you and your family alone. If I don’t do it, Tristan will. I can’t give the coven any reason to doubt me before my coronation.”
“Because Tristan will use anything he can against you.”
“You were right about him. He was having me followed.”
His eyebrows shot up.
“After our conversation in the cafeteria, I noticed a face in the crowd. A human. Someone who ordinarily I would never notice. But I noticed him when I was leaving work, and then again, later in the day when I was shopping on Michigan Avenue. I intentionally bumped into him. Easy enough; humans are dreadfully slow. Once I had him in my grip, I compelled him to tell me the truth. You were right—he’d been following me and reporting back to Tristan on the regular.”
“And is this spy now at the bottom of Lake Michigan?” It made Tobias’s skin crawl to think Sabrina had been followed this entire time.
She laughed. “No. Instead of breaking his neck, I decided to leave him to do what he was sent to do. Then I avoided you and focused all my time on coven business. Let the man report my virtuous vampire behavior. It was as close to a fuck you as I’m going to get until I become master.”
“That’s why you’ve been so distant?”
“Yes.” She shook her head. “Nothing has changed. I want to be with you, Tobias. I wouldn’t have avoided you if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. There’s no reason we can’t be friends once I become master, as long as no one suspects you’re not human.”
“Friends.” He didn’t like the sound of that.
“And more, eventually. If we’re careful.” She moved her hood back on her head, and her eyes sparkled in the light. “Our coven has ties to everything in this city, things you see and things you don’t see. We live under the surface, pulling the strings. We can either be a force for good or a force for evil. If I become master, I make sure the coven stays a force for good. In time, I’ll be able to carve out a safe place for us.”
“In time…”
“It’s the only way.”
“So, the only future you can see for us is one where we sneak around, surviving on stolen moments?”
She laughed sadly under her breath. “There’s something else I have to tell you. If any vampire finds out what you are, they’re supposed to immediately report you to the Forebears, the council of ancients that oversees all vampires. Vampires hate shifters, and dragons are thought to be extinct. If they learn what you are, Tobias, they will see you as a threat and they will want you and your family dead.”
Tobias ground his teeth, the news of Scoria’s arrival dancing through his head. “Wanting my family dead seems to be an epidemic lately.”
“Who else wants your family dead?”
He waved a hand dismissively. He refused to worry her about anything else. “I’ll wait for you, Sabrina. Forever if I have to.”
He didn’t miss the tears that formed in her eyes. “It already seems like forever.”
“There’s something you should know,” he said. “I tracked the werewolf who stabbed you. He’s left the city.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. We know he had help. Someone got him out of the city. But he’s gone.”
“If Tristan was working with him, the men he has following me know nothing about it. I compelled them to within an inch of their lives—they told me everything.”
A gust of wind blew between them, and Sabrina hugged herself against the chill. He took a step toward her, wanting to share his natural heat. She didn’t back away. “In my lifetime, I’ve been flung across the universe, ridden a ship across the Atlantic to come to the New World, and trekked the wilderness with an indigenous guide to settle in Chicago. My life has not been easy, Sabrina, and that’s not even scratching the surface of what I’ve endured on this planet alone. I’ve never met anyone quite like you, and I thought maybe I could love you. That’s a hard thing too. To be so close to something you thought you might never have, to briefly feel the warmth of the sun on your face and then have it snatched away.”
“Oh Tobias….” He smelled her tears on the wind.
“I can wait for you, but I don’t want to.” A growl rumbled in his chest, and the polar bear darted deeper into his habitat.
She sighed. “You come from a different world… Paragon, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, if you had the opportunity to be the leader your people needed, to go back home and fix whatever went wrong that made you escape to this world, wouldn’t you do it? I know it’s hard for you to put yourself in my shoes. You weren’t raised to be royalty. But I have to do this, for so many reasons. I owe it to my people.”
He stilled. He’d never told Sabrina he was Paragonian royalty. Who was he kidding? He barely qualified. As third in line, he had never had a chance of sitting on the throne and never would. It wasn’t even worth mentioning. “I think I get where you’re coming from. I just wanted you to know how I feel.”
She paused and looked down at her gloved fingers. “So, how did you cure Katelyn?”
“I used a magical healing amulet that my brother recovered from our Native American guide, Maiara. I helped Gabriel with something in exchange for it. I tried to use it to heal you too, but it didn’t work.”
“I remember. I saw it. White and iridescent.”
“Yes.”
“You told Katelyn it was a mermaid scale.” She laughed.
“That was actually her hypothesis. I just didn’t tell her she was wrong.” He gave her a wry grin.
“You know if you ever use it again, people will suspect you. One little girl is explainable. More and the coven will grow suspicious.”
“I know. It’s locked away now. It was a onetime thing.”
They stared at each other in the cold, bright sun, and he thought at the right angle her skin looked translucent, like she was carved from ice. He squelched the desire to take her into his arms and watch her melt in the heat of his embrace.
“I am sorry it has to be this way,” she said, her voice breaking. When she spoke again, he could hardly hear her. “I felt it too, the warmth, almost like I’d found something I never knew I’d lost. But that’s not how the world works. Life isn’t about our happiness, is it? It’s about survival and expectations and doing the right thing even when it’s difficult.”
He stepped in closer to her, the saline scent of her tears filling his nose. “World be damned.” In one motion, he brushed her hood back, braced his hand on the back of her neck, and kissed her. It was not a gentle kiss. It was filled with longing and passion and need. He was a boy staring at the moon, knowing his feet would never leave the ground.
Only they did. One moment he was kissing her in the zoo and the next his molecules had broken apart and were traveling over the city at her command.
Sabrina re-formed in Tobias’s bedroom and toppled into his arms. Dematerializing during the day was mentally and physically draining, but she’d had to get out of there. As abandoned as the zoo seemed and as much as she’d taken precautions by sending her human shadow on a wild-goose chase in advance, someone might have been watching. And while she should have stopped kissing Tobias and pulled away, she couldn’t bring herself to do so.
“Whoa,” he said, catching her in his arms. “You shouldn’t have done that. Not during the day.” His eyes darted around the room.
; “No shit.” Her eyelashes fluttered. “Couldn’t stay. Someone might see.”
She leaned heavily into his chest and he rearranged her in his arms. He was still wearing his winter coat, a heavy, camel-colored cashmere, soft and cool beneath her cheek.
“I’ll be fine in a minute,” she said.
He held her tighter. “Take your time. You’re safe here. Raven has wards around the place.”
“I’m surprised I got through.”
“They only keep out those with malicious intent. You must not want to kill me.”
“Not at the moment.” Her eyes drifted to his lips.
She blinked. The bed was made. Everything in its place. Same Tobias. “Did I tell you the last time I was here that this room is exactly what I expected it would be?”
“What does that mean?” Tobias laughed. “What did you expect?”
“It’s… meticulous. Like when you do surgery. Everything in a row. Neat. Orderly. Thought out for practicality. Just like everything else in your life.”
“My bedroom is meticulous?” The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Impeccably made bed, white walls, shiny dark wood, clean lines, not a speck of dust on any of the furniture…”
“I like things clean.”
“You like things perfect.” She straightened and took a step back from him. “I’m not perfect, Tobias. I never will be. Right now my world is a mess. I’m being followed, forced to quit my job, made to live underground and lead a coven of vampires.” She swayed on her feet and took a deep, cleansing breath as the tears threatened to come.
“You’re perfect to me.” Tugging off his hat and gloves, Tobias stripped out of his coat and reached for hers. She let him remove her it as if she were a child.
“I shouldn’t be here right now.” Pulling off her hat, she ran her hands through her flattened hair and tried not notice the way his biceps stretched the sleeves of his white dress shirt. She failed miserably. The open collar revealed a deep recess between his neck and collarbone, the muscles of his chest and neck pronounced enough in that small window to cause her insides to turn electric and alive. With his coat off, his heady cinnamon-almond scent pervaded her senses.
Windy City Dragon Page 14