by A. C. Arthur
His door opened and Ravyn waited, her limbs ready to act according to the instructions from her brain. How this was going to end she wasn’t quite sure, but she refused to be on the receiving end of any more lies, duplicity or whatever the hell else was going on around her. Either he was going to be straight with her or...
The passenger door on the driver’s side opened and Ravyn leapt out, wrapping her arms and legs around Steele’s big frame. The force and unexpectedness of her action sent him back until he fell onto the ground with her on top of him. She laced her fingers around his throat while she straddled him, wishing like hell she had one of her knives, or even that dagger. Her palms tingled at that thought as if they, too, recalled how it’d felt to hold that ancient piece.
“Who the hell are you? Why’d you pick me to pull into your sordid little supernatural games? Why did you lie to me last night? And where’s Cree?” Her chest heaved for air, pain sifting through every breath like shards of glass. “Where’s Cree?”
She repeated that question because it was the most important. If she didn’t learn anything else from this, their second Q&A session, Ravyn desperately needed to know where Cree was so she could go and get him. Whatever she had to do or say she would to spare his life.
Would his answers also affect how she’d thought she was beginning to feel about him? She didn’t know, but as of now she was hating herself for letting her guard down when she’d known how men could be. If he’d drugged her, he’d taken control from her and she’d never forgive him for that.
His body was solid and he barely blinked before reaching to wrap his fingers around her wrists. He looked so calm and so unbothered by what she was saying or doing, or both, and it sent more rage flying through her body so that her fingers tightened around his neck. He didn’t try to remove her hands, not right away. No, for endless seconds he simply stared up at her with those soulful brown eyes.
Eyes that she knew were fake!
She squeezed tighter.
“You’re a lying deceitful bastard and I want you to answer my questions before I kill you! Do you hear me? Answer my questions!”
Her hair fell down the side of her face and her arms burned from the exertion, but she wouldn’t release him. She wouldn’t stop until he answered her. But he still hadn’t opened his mouth. His silence only frustrated and angered her more, if that was even possible.
With the slowest movement Steele eased her hands away from his throat as if they were nothing but pieces of lint on his skin. However, he had a solid grip on them, switching from a two-hand hold to one without any effort at all. He brought that other hand up to cup her face, his thumb wiping away a tear that had somehow snuck past her finished-with-crying stance.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally, his voice gruff, eyes searching her face for something in return.
“You’re sorry?” she asked with a huff. “Sorry? That’s all you have to say?” The one word shouldn’t have pierced through all that pain stuffed into her chest at the moment, but somehow it did.
“Yeah,” he said with a slight nod. “I’m sorry.”
“For what exactly? Lying to me, drugging me or both?”
“I never lied,” he said and then clapped his lips shut as if he were rethinking that statement. “And I didn’t drug you. It’s called mind cleaning and it was only supposed to erase your memories from the last two weeks. Magnum knew not to make it too potent.”
“What? Like a cocktail? What kind of insanity is that?”
“It’s not a drink or a drug,” he said and then sighed. “I know it was invasive and wrong, but I wanted to protect you and if I’d had any other choice...”
She shook her head, feeling the sting of more tears, but dared them to fall. “It’s not enough,” she said, but the words held no bite, dammit. “It’s not enough.” This time was to convince herself she meant it, because she wanted to mean it. He couldn’t change her mind about feeling betrayed by him with a few silly words.
“I know.” He kept moving his thumb over her cheek and the hand holding hers eased. “I messed up. Again.”
“What do you mean again?” There was a vulnerability in his voice she’d never heard before. Upon first glance there was nothing vulnerable or weak about Steele Eze. Even lying here in where the hell were they? She looked around and saw that they were in the middle of a forest, at night. How apropos after what had just happened back in town. Lying beneath her right now, he still appeared imposing as his massive chest heaved up and down with each breath, his strong arms extended upward while his hands touched her with more gentleness than she’d ever experienced in her life.
She moved next, easing back away from him so that his hand slipped from her face and the one that had been holding hers dropped to rest on his chest. Their gazes held for a few seconds in what she recognized as a quiet truce and she eased off him, rolling to the side to sit with her legs crossed. He sat up and then they were both sitting on the ground in the middle of the forest like they were on a school camping trip.
“I didn’t save my sister,” he said quietly. “I wanted to, but I didn’t. And then you were there and I wanted to save you too.”
“Save me? What? I don’t understand what you’re talking about? What happened to your sister?”
“She died.”
He said the words as simply as if he’d just told her the time of day.
“How?”
“The clan wars back in the town of Mobo. Our parents moved there soon after there was trouble in our hometown. There weren’t supposed to be many like us there so we could live free from judgment, but that never lasts long. No matter how hard a people try there’s always someone who will judge, ridicule and try to overpower. For us, this time, it was some of our own.”
His voice was melodic, like one of those narrators to a documentary speaking while pictures of a barren land were being shown. Ravyn was transfixed not only by his voice and his words, but also by the emotion she clearly heard in them. Weariness, pain, disappointment, all wrapped in the words he continued to speak. She recognized each of those emotions and that’s why she sat still and listened to him, not because she’d forgiven him that easily, because she hadn’t.
“There was physical fighting and injuries succumbed to on both sides, but we were determined to win. We were there first and we weren’t going to let Venomstone take us down. It was in our nature to fight to win and that’s what we were doing. But that night I dreamed...she was there fighting with us and then she wasn’t.” His voice broke and he looked down at his hands. “I knew the group she was with and what piece of land they were planning to attack next and I tried to get there. I really did, but there were so many of them from Venomstone and I had to fight them off before I could finally get to her, but when I did—”
He couldn’t finish but it was okay, Ravyn knew the rest. She reached for his hand, holding it in hers, because in all the years she’d needed someone to just hold her hand, there’d been no one. No other parts of their bodies touched, just their hands, and when his fingers closed to grip hers tightly, Ravyn let him hold on.
Long moments later he spoke again. “Her name was Opal and she was a lot like you. Stubborn, tenacious, reckless, fearless.”
“Then she was a queen,” Ravyn said, trying to keep her tone light even though she felt a tremendous weight bearing down on her right now.
Steele chuckled. “Yeah, she was.”
More silence hung between them as the sounds of the night echoed around them. The trees here were very tall and provided something like a canopy over them so that she couldn’t see the sky at all. But they weren’t alone here, she could hear the ominous hooting of owls and a creaking of something she suspected might be a little bigger than a cricket.
“Let me see your eyes,” she said, speaking into the night.
His hand went stiff in hers, but she didn’t let go.
> “I know they’re different and I know there’s more to that story you just told me. For whatever reason we’ve been thrown together I’ve got to be okay with it, because there’s nothing I can do about it now. But I want the truth. I’ve never lied to you, so I deserve it.”
And she wouldn’t stand for anything less. Her father had been a mean-spirited, high-handed, brute who never told her anything but how worthless she was. Sitting here with this man, who had somehow touched her in places she’d thought long since closed and locked tight, she was demanding more.
When he turned slightly, she did too and he took her hands, bringing them up to his face, before dropping his to his side. Ravyn let her hands remain still for a few seconds, loving the feel of his warm skin beneath her palm, the soft hairs of his goatee. She turned one hand backward so her knuckles could rub lightly over his cheek and then she gasped when he blinked and his eyes went from brown to orange. The startle was momentary and then her fingers were moving to stroke over his thick brows. The orange glowed so bright it almost seemed painful, but as he’d revealed them she’d noticed his body relaxing as if this were the real him.
On instinct she moved her hands back to his hair, released the long locks from the band he always wore them in. They flowed around his shoulders adding more darkness to be centered by that penetrating orange light.
“What are you?” It was a question she never thought she’d ask anyone or anything.
“I am a Drakon,” he said, his voice dripping with pride. “A Dream Reaper Drakon.”
Of all those words only two were familiar—dream and reaper. And just like that energy had started to fill the memories she’d thought she lost, some things started to click into place.
“The Reaper is hunting me, isn’t he? Or was that her back there? Is that why she has Cree, because she really wants me?” It would be an explanation for why he kept saying he was trying to protect her. Not a great explanation, since she couldn’t forget her father’s words about this being a human’s world. But somewhere in her mind she thought what she’d just said made sense.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, before coming to a stand. She followed, standing a few feet away from him now as he’d turned and took some steps away.
“Yes,” he said and then turned back to her. “I saw you in my dream a few months ago. And I knew I had to save you. That I couldn’t let you die the way Opal had.”
“Why me?” It seemed like such a mundane question. How many people who weren’t where they wanted to be in life, or felt unfair things were always happening to them asked that very same question over and over again?
“As a Dream Reaper do you just hang around in dreams saving people? If so your title’s a huge contradiction.”
He cleared his throat. “My job is to lead the Reaper to whoever is on his list. It’s not something I do every night, just when it’s my turn to find a name on his list. I don’t know how the work is divided amongst other Dream Reapers, if that’s what you’re going to ask me next.”
She wasn’t, but she was accepting all details he was providing tonight. Cree was in danger, she was in the woods with a guy she both wanted to hate and lov... She just needed all the answers, that was all.
“The Reaper only collects souls of those with more power than they can control, because if that power were to be used by the wrong entity, it could upset the balance of good and evil on the realms. I didn’t believe Opal should’ve been on the list and when I saw you, I didn’t believe you belonged there either.”
Ravyn thought about those words for a few seconds. She thought about everything that had happened to her in the past couple of weeks since she’d stolen that dagger. Running fast, feeling stronger, seeing ghosts on the street.
“I stole the dagger and the dagger has power.”
Hearing those words in her voice was jarring. Since when did she believe in any other being on this earth other than humans? Since that woman with the stunning body had disappeared in a cloud of red smoke, holding Cree off the ground with one hand.
“I believe that’s true,” he replied.
She shook her head because while she was thinking she had a grasp on this story, she really didn’t. “But you said you saw me in your dream a few months ago. I didn’t have the dagger then, so why would I have been on the Reaper’s list?”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” he said. “At first, I just thought my power was going wonky, that your name being on the collection list was a mistake. So I wanted to correct that mistake. I even led the Reaper to a different soul in place of yours, but then I had another dream. You were in it, but you weren’t talking like you. Then Opal was there and then... Temptra was there, or at least her voice was.” He scrubbed both hands down his face and Ravyn crossed her arms over her chest because she wanted to touch him.
“I think Temptra—she was the one at Robles’s house—needs you alive and the dagger for something, but then she may kill you afterward. But you’re also still on the Reaper’s list for some reason. So, it’s a race to see which one of them can get to you first,” he said.
“Oh, wow.” She wasn’t really sure what her response to that was supposed to be. Two people or rather, things, were trying to kill her. And her father said she’d never amount to anything. Well, she was important to these two even if that importance ended with her death. And now she’d completely flipped if she was thinking being on two hit lists was a good thing.
“But neither of them counted on me stopping them.” He came closer to her now. “And I am going to stop them, Ravyn. I won’t let you die.”
Yesterday, her instinct would’ve been to argue with him that she could protect herself, that she didn’t need to be saved by any man. Today, after all that had just happened, all she wanted was for Cree to be safe. If that meant going along with Steele’s professions to protect her, then so be it.
“I won’t let Cree die,” she said vehemently.
“You love Cree?”
At first it sounded like a statement, but Ravyn realized it was a question and that Steele was looking at her as if he were holding his breath, waiting for the answer. She wasn’t so amazed by all that she’d just learned that she could ignore the quick stroke to her ego at the thought that he might be jealous. Even if it still wasn’t clear what she and Steele were doing. He was a Dream Reaper and she was just her. How could they work as a couple?
She couldn’t think about that right now.
“I love Cree as if he were my brother. He saved my life. So, I want you to tell me what I have to do to get to him and then kill that bitch for daring to touch him?”
He smiled, his lips spreading across even white teeth.
“Fearless,” he said.
She nodded. “Right. Okay, I’m fearless. Show me what you really are. You said a Drakon but I’m not familiar with that word. I’d rather you just show me. Right here, right now.”
“I thought you wanted to find Temptra.”
“I do. But I need to know what I’m dealing with, who’s with me and who’s against me.”
“I’m always going to be with you, Ravyn. Never doubt that. No matter what happens from this moment on, don’t doubt that I’m with you.”
He hadn’t needed to say those words, because she felt it. With every breath she took Ravyn realized she’d felt his presence. From the nights she knew he was following her around the city, to the night on the roof when they first touched, and to last night when she’d wrapped her arms around him and kissed his scars. Even this morning, when she’d awakened in her bed at Safeside, she’d felt him, lingering inside her mind and, so help her, her heart.
“Show me,” she insisted.
With a curt nod he pointed a distance away. “Go stand over there.”
She almost asked why, but changed her mind. Instead she did what he said, walking at least twenty feet away to stand ne
ar a fallen tree.
When she turned back to look at him, he took a deep breath and released it slowly. His head lowered and with the glow of his eyes gone the clearing was cast into shadows. She thought she felt the ground tremble beneath her but Ravyn kept her gaze locked on Steele. His body moved slowly, arms hanging by his side, legs slightly spread apart, but something was happening. Those arms didn’t stay the same and neither did his legs. Everything grew, expanding out and up, twisting and churning until she had to crane her neck to follow the metamorphosis that was Steele turning into a Drakon.
Trees leaned to the side as the breadth of the magnificent beast filled more than the available space. Leaves rustled and heat filled the air by the time it stopped moving. Her mouth had gaped open, her eyes going as wide as they possibly could as she looked at something she would have never believed possible. She took a step forward, both wanting and needing to get closer to touch him, to feel if it was the same as before, the same as the night he’d carried her to the mountain. But his head moved then. It went from the downcast position, lifting up until those orange eyes pierced through the darkness once again. His mouth opened slightly displaying rows of ferocious-looking teeth.
She retreated, going back so far her calves bumped against that fallen tree. Then she stopped, still staring as realization hit her. “Dragon,” she whispered. “You’re a dragon.”
* * *
And now he wasn’t. It had taken him about a minute to shift into dragon form when he knew Ravyn was waiting to see who he really was, and just a couple seconds for him to go back to human form after he’d heard the call from Magnum.
Coming to a stand from the squatting position he always returned in, Steele was a little surprised to see Ravyn standing directly in front of him. He’d thought for sure he’d spend another ten or fifteen minutes trying to explain to her how he was able to shift and walk upright like any other human after being such a gigantic beast. As Magnum’s call was urgent, he didn’t really have time for that explanation, but for Ravyn he would have made the time.