by A. C. Arthur
“And then you’re gonna explain why you brought that human here?”
“There’s nothing to explain,” he said and turned to walk away. But that wasn’t happening anytime soon as Magnum, Theo and Bleu walked toward him.
Fuck!
“There’s a lot to explain. And you’d better make it quick before I lose the last bit of patience I have with you and the secrecy you’ve been displaying for the past few weeks.” Theo was angry, his piercing sapphire-blue Drakon eyes glowing as he glowered at Steele.
“Can I at least get dressed first?”
Theo took a step toward him. “No! You can start talking. I want answers right now, Steele. How could you be so stupid? Why would you bring a human here?”
“For the same reason you did!” Steele countered, taking a step toward Theo. “Remember that? You brought Shola here to keep her safe. Well, I just did the same for Ravyn.”
Theo’s fists closed at his sides. “You had no right.”
“And neither did you! Exposure wasn’t supposed to be a thing, remember? That was your rule, until you thought it was fine to break it.” Steele wasn’t backing down. He knew he should just offer Theo an explanation, but he couldn’t. There was too much swirling around inside of him at the moment to figure out why.
Magnum stepped between Steele and Theo, looking his brother straight in the eye. “Steele, who is she, man? Why’d you shift and come here with her?”
There were so many answers he could provide or he could’ve just pushed past all of them and went to his suite to get dressed, before going to search for Ravyn.
“She’s from my dream.” The words came softly and Steele knew it was too late to take them back.
Magnum held his gaze, seeing something Steele knew none of the other Drakon would see.
“Let’s get back to the house. Shola is with the woman now, so she’s safe. You can get dressed and we’ll meet in the conference room.” Bleu was always the voice of reason. Or rather, his rich gravelly voice was that of the oldest Drakon Watcher that Steele had ever known.
“Yeah, I’m tired of staring at your ass,” Reese quipped and jogged past him, heading toward the mountain.
“Ten minutes, Steele. That’s all you get.” Theo said the words and turned to walk away.
Bleu looked at Steele. “You will have to answer to him.”
“He doesn’t control me,” Steele countered.
“There you are wrong. This isn’t about control. It’s about the emperor you swore your allegiance to and the rules you agreed to follow. If there was a good reason to break those rules, so be it, we’ll deal with it. But you will give him the respect of telling him such reason and then you will do whatever is necessary to fix what you may have started.”
The older Drakon left and Steele and Magnum were alone.
“You can’t save her,” Magnum said solemnly.
Steele tensed. “I can and I will.”
He started to walk away but was stopped by his brother’s next words.
“She’s not Opal.”
* * *
“Get your hands off me!” Ravyn yelled and yanked free from the grasp of the woman who’d stopped her from running in the opposite direction of the mountain fortress she’d seen.
She had no idea where she was, but wherever it was, everything was larger than life. The trees seemed taller and greener. The creek seemed more like a lake, with water running faster and clearer than any she’d ever seen. The little bridge she’d run over was made of wide wood planks and had thick railings on the side to keep someone like her who was running like a maniac from toppling over and landing in the water. And the house that had been up ahead as she’d skidded to a stop at the end of that bridge was big and tall like a fortress.
Well, to be fair, it was a freakin’ mountain. Like the soaring up to the sky until its tip looked like it was actually kissing a cloud, type of big. There were curving steps and glass doors and higher up were windows that looked like they had burst from the jagged rock. If this were a picture in a book she’d have been intrigued. Up close and personal something told her it wasn’t a place she wanted to be.
And when she whirled around after pulling her arm free, it was to see another woman a few inches taller than her with the greenest eyes and spiked blonde hair.
“Stand down, Ziva,” another woman said. It was the first one who’d grabbed her before and she spoke with an accent that sounded a lot like Steele’s.
The woman called Ziva didn’t move and neither did Ravyn. She’d tucked her dagger in the back band of her jeans and had pulled the purple T-shirt she wore down to cover it while she ran. But she was ready for whatever this Ziva person might have a mind to dish out.
“I said stand down,” the other woman continued, and this time stepped up to place her hand on Ziva’s arm.
They were starkly different, the woman with the accent was shorter, more compact and controlled, while Ziva, the taller one, had a distinct edgy look in her glowing green eyes.
When Ziva finally stepped aside, the other woman came closer to Ravyn. She locked her fingers together in front of her and stared.
“I am Shola. My husband Theo and I welcome you to the Office.”
“What the hell is the Office and where is it? No, I’d rather know how I can get out of here, if you don’t mind.” Yes, she sounded rude, and in a rush, because she was. This wasn’t where she was supposed to be. And what she’d seen before and after coming here, she didn’t believe. She couldn’t believe.
“She’s hysterical. You want me to calm her down?” Ziva asked.
Shola didn’t bother to look back at Ziva, whose tone clearly said she was ready for some type of physical interaction.
“I want her to tell me what her name is and if there’s anything we can do to make her comfortable,” Shola said in answer to the question.
Even though she really wanted to get out of here, she couldn’t dismiss the fact that she liked Shola’s voice and her eyes. They didn’t glow like Ziva’s, but were brown with red flecks. Her hair, a stunning afro, looked as soft as Steele’s locks felt.
Steele.
Where the hell was he?
“My name’s Ravyn Walsh and I really don’t know how I got here. What did you call this, the Office? I know we’re not in downtown Burgess because nothing downtown looks like this.”
“We’re still in Burgess,” Shola told her. “Just about an hour outside the city limits. You can rest here. Grab a shower, lie down. Dinner’s not ready yet, but you’re welcome to join us, or you can take your meal up here in your room if you’d like.”
She was shaking her head before Shola could finish the sentence. “This isn’t my room. I’m not staying here.”
“How do you think you’re getting back home? Not the same way you arrived, that’s for sure.” Ziva moved to the side of Shola, standing with her legs partially spread as if she were ready to leap the moment someone—namely Ravyn—took a lunge toward her.
That told her Shola had some type of authority here. And that, along with her husband, they were both probably in control.
“Look, I can get a rideshare back to the city. Nobody has to take me anywhere,” she said and tried not to think of the fact that it wasn’t somebody that had brought her here, but rather something. Would these two think she was a raving lunatic if she said that?
“Nonsense. You’ll stay here tonight and we’ll figure out how you’re going to get home in the morning. I’ll get you something to slip into, you go ahead and take a long hot shower. It’ll relax you.” Shola was persistently nice. That could get annoying pretty quick.
“I don’t want to relax. I want to leave. Can you show me to the front door of this place?” Ravyn asked, because staying here just wasn’t an option.
“I sure can,” Ziva quipped and nodded toward the bedroom door.
“Stop it, Ziva. Maybe you should talk to Steele first and then you can decide whether or not you’ll be staying,” Shola offered. “But it might still be a good idea to get that hot shower, because Steele might be a while.”
“Why? Where is he? Are you holding him in a room and forcing him to clean up, as well?” The first time Shola had offered her a shower, Ravyn had looked down at her clothes to see if the travel to this mysterious place had gotten her dirty or something. Other than the light dust from those things—things she could explain no better than this place—she looked fine.
“He’s got some questions to answer and I’m gonna leave because I wouldn’t miss this moment for the world,” Ziva said and headed toward the door.
Shola didn’t move, but she did extend a hand toward Ravyn. When Ravyn failed to immediately move to accept her hand, Shola touched her shoulder instead. The touch was warm and Ravyn stopped wringing her hands, an act she hadn’t realized she was doing until just now.
“I didn’t see him. How’d he get here? Did those things bring us here?”
“What things?” Shola asked.
“The ones...” Ravyn blinked and shook her head. She’d decided these women were going to think she was a raging nutcase, because that’s what Ravyn thought about the people she’d seen usually at the clubs or on the streets around the clubs that talked of vampires, witches and something they called demonics walking the earth. “I mean, the people who showed up when we were at his hotel room.”
“Steele has a hotel room?” Ziva asked. “Damn, this is getting good.”
Ziva opened the door and waited. Shola let her hand slide down Ravyn’s arm until she clasped her hand.
“Take the shower. When you come out clothes will be on the bed. Put them on and wait here. Steele will come to you with dinner.”
“But I don’t wan—”
With her free hand, Shola lifted one finger to touch her lips. “Shhhhh. Everything will be fine.”
Shola released her hand then and turned to walk out the door with Ziva. When the door closed, a lock clicked into place and Ravyn cursed.
“What the hell have you gotten yourself into this time?” she asked with a weary sigh.
* * *
The room was silent when Steele walked in. He’d almost changed his mind about coming down, especially since Ziva had sent him a message on his communicator telling him which room Ravyn was in. All he had to do was walk through the many passageways that would look to anyone else like a maze, get to her room and take her back to her home. She had to be going stir-crazy in that room, wondering where she was and trying to figure out a way she could break out. Ravyn wasn’t the type of woman that would do well in forced captivity, not that he knew many who would.
“Have a seat,” Theo said when Steele only stood behind the chair he normally took in the conference room. “And start from the beginning.”
“I was there the night Ravyn stole the dagger,” he said before taking his seat. “I should’ve realized it that night, but I was distrac—I missed it. By the time I figured out it was cursed by the Egyptians, I went to try and get it from her, but she was already trying to sell it. Then you called me back here for that meeting and I found out that Daron Robles was the man she stole the dagger from.”
“Shit!” Aiken cursed. He was dressed in a black shirt that looked like it might be silk and a shiny pink tie.
“She stole a cursed dagger from our client?” Reese said before giving a low whistle that annoyed the hell out of Steele.
“Before he was our client,” he corrected.
“Tomato, tomahto,” Ziva quipped.
“There’s more,” Bleu said, his watchful russet brown eyes bearing down on Steele.
Steele leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table. “Robles bought the dagger for half a million dollars, but he’s double-mortgaged all three of his homes. There are two more pieces in his house worth about a million and yet he’s got a bargain basement security system. And his assistant hasn’t been paid in over a year.” Most of that information he’d received while he was in the shower. He’d sent a message to Isla requesting an update the moment he’d made it back to his private suite, and because she was phenomenal at what she did, she’d delivered.
“So he spent all his money on the dagger and two other pieces?” Reese shrugged. “Probably not the smartest thing to do, but there’s no crime in that. However, being a thief, albeit a hot as hell one, is akin to being a criminal.”
Steele’s Drakon eyes zeroed in on Reese with such intensity, Reese’s eyes flipped, as well, his beast more than ready to go head-to-head with Steele’s.
“Or it means somebody else purchased those items and for whatever reason had Robles holding them,” Magnum said.
Steele heard his brother’s voice and took a deep breath. He clenched and unfurled his fingers, trying like hell to calm his mind.
“You said there’s a curse,” Shola said. “What type of curse?”
“The dagger was cursed by the Egyptians to kill anyone who owned it because it was stolen from King Tutankhamun. The cycle of the curse runs on the next full moon. So far, the research I’ve done only speaks of the death portion of the curse, but I get the feeling that as the dagger has traveled, the mechanisms of the curse may have morphed into something else.” The way he hadn’t been able to just take it from Ravyn wasn’t just because his beast was infatuated with her. There’d been some power at work there, a power that Steele hadn’t been able to properly handle without exposing himself to Ravyn and whoever else was living in that underground place with her. He’d hoped that as soon as he completed the purchase from Ravyn he could dig a little deeper, maybe travel to Egypt to find out more, but then they were attacked.
“Robles said he had enforcers and private investigators looking for the dagger. I think those PIs paid a visit to my hotel a while ago.”
“The hotel that has since been on the news because the humans are trying to figure out what type of explosion blew out the side of the building,” Bleu said dryly.
“The explosion called Hot as Steele,” Reese added with a chuckle.
Steele didn’t react to hearing the nickname the other Drakon had given him because of his quick and volatile temper.
“Someone showed up at your hotel and you decided it was a good idea to shift, bust through the side of the building in the middle of the city and bring a human back to the Office?” Theo’s question was calmly spoken, but the emperor was clearly upset. Flames were visible in the blue depths of his eyes and each time the room grew quiet the sound of his beast chuffing in anger could be heard like an ominous whisper.
“Not someone, mummies. First there were two. In the blink of an eye there were twelve, then twenty. Every time I killed two, ten more appeared. I couldn’t fight them all, not in human form and not with her there. I had no other choice. They weren’t going to just let us walk out the door.”
But he planned to go back to that hotel or anywhere he thought he might be able to find those bastards, because without having to worry about Ravyn getting hurt, Steele could have scorched every one of them. Of course, the side of the building would probably have still been blown out, because his flame surge was not only hot as the bowels of the earth but traveled with the force of a torpedo and volcano combined.
“Why would mummies be in search of a cursed dagger? The curse should take care of its enemies without any help,” Shola said. “It doesn’t seem right to me.”
“Me either,” Theo agreed. He’d sat back, elbows on the arms of the chair, one finger moving over his jaw.
The emperor continued, “Tomorrow, Magnum and Reese will go back to the hotel to find anything that tells us more about these mummies.”
Steele immediately protested. “I’m not walking away from this.”
“I’m not telling you to,” Theo said. He didn’t have to say m
ore because everyone in the room was thinking that if Theo had said that, there would’ve been nothing Steele could do.
But they were wrong.
“You have exposure to clean up and a dagger to obtain,” Theo said.
“I already bought the dagger from her,” he said.
Magnum shook his head. “You bought a half-million-dollar dagger that’s sure to kill you.”
“There’s still twenty-eight days left until the full moon. Besides, it hasn’t done anything to me yet and I’ve been pretty close to it. And it hasn’t killed Ravyn.” Although Steele wasn’t sure how much longer that would remain true, especially if the dagger was connected to why the Reaper wanted her dead.
“Look, I know you’re worried about exposure, but really, Theo, aren’t we past that by now?” Steele continued as he stared down the table at the emperor and then to Shola. “There’re people in Burgess who know preternaturals exist and then there are some who don’t believe. But not believing doesn’t make us go away. If we’re really here to protect them, shouldn’t we be doing so out in the open so that they know they have someone in their corner?”
He’d contemplate how Ravyn’s situation had brought him to that conclusion later. For now, he needed to get out of this meeting as quickly as possible.
“He’s got a point there,” Reese said.
Steele looked to the other Drakon who worked his nerves on a daily basis. He nodded to him and Reese shrugged.
“We’re not like vampires or witches or even the fae, who can use their glamour to look like humans. Each time we take on our true form we knock down buildings, destroy whole blocks. And if there are humans near, we risk causing a widespread panic at seeing a big-ass dragon walking along these streets. This isn’t the movies, Steele, and we’re not Godzilla,” Aiken countered.
“But this is a time of war,” Ziva said solemnly. “The Royal Blood is pissed at us for killing one of their own months ago. They’re going to strike back and what’re we going to do, stay hidden here in this mountain while they bring their creepy bloodsucking violence to the city?”