Mercy Burns

by Keri Arthur

  “We’re not here to do a deal, Angus.” Damon’s voice was still flat. “We intend to stop these men, and we intend to get the answers we need from you. It’s your choice as to whether we do that nicely or not.”

  Angus downed his bourbon in one gulp then poured another. “Then you might as well kill me now, because I’m not helping you unless you help me to save Coral.”

  Damon shifted and the tension in the air sharpened abruptly.

  “Don’t,” I said, half pushing to my feet. I wasn’t entirely sure what I intended to do, but I couldn’t just sit here and let him kill Angus. I might not entirely trust him, I might never be able to forgive him for his part in killing Rainey, but I didn’t want to see his brains splattered across the boat decks, either. He didn’t deserve that any more than Rainey had deserved what happened to her.

  Damon glanced at me, jaw clenched and eyes as harsh as stone. He was going to do it, I thought, and I added hurriedly, “Please, Damon.”

  He continued to study me, then said sharply, “For you, not for him. But don’t ask for any more favors, Mercy. You’ve had more than your fair share.”

  I relaxed back into the seat and blew out a breath. Danger averted, but for how long? Death might have been restrained this time, but not for long. If Damon believed it was for the best, then he would kill, regardless of what I thought or did. It was his job, after all.

  And I was insane to be so attracted to the man.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Angus said, the tension in him as sharp as that still riding Damon. His gaze met mine. “If I can get her out before her family arrives, we can all just flee, without her family putting themselves in danger.”

  “Meaning you’re endangering our lives rather than theirs,” Damon said in an annoyed sort of voice.

  “You’re more than capable of taking care of yourself, muerte.”

  “Mercy’s not.”

  “Mercy is, and she won’t be left behind, so don’t even think it,” I said, before Angus could even open his mouth.

  Damon gave me a dark sort of look. “Where are they keeping your mate?”

  “Santa Rosa,” Angus said, then grimaced. “It’s far enough away from me—and far enough from the ocean—that neither of us can be of much help to the other.”

  “So why call in reinforcements from the sea?” I asked, confused.

  He glanced at me. “Because there are at least two men guarding her at the one time, and only one of me. I need the additional muscle.” He glanced at Damon, and a hint of mischief touched his lips. “You’ll do just fine in that department, lad.”

  Angus shifted a little, moving from one foot to the other, and in that moment, the window exploded inward. He jerked sideways and blood splattered the mirror behind him.

  Then he fell to the floor in a heap.

  Chapter Eight

  Damon moved so quickly he was little more than a blur. He hit me low and fast, dragging me facedown onto the wraparound couch while he knelt beside me on the floor.

  “They shot him!” I said, voice half muffled by the leather and more than a little shaky. “Why the hell would they shoot him?”

  “Maybe they’ve figured he’s outlasted his usefulness.” His attention was on the window above us rather than me, and his body hummed with an energy that seemed dangerously ready to explode. “Keep your head down until we know if they’re still out there.”

  The warning made my heart race even harder, and I hadn’t thought that was possible. “But why would they risk shooting him with so many people around?”

  “With rifles these days, you don’t have to be anywhere near your target to be certain of a kill.”

  “It just seems wrong for dragons to be using weapons,” I muttered, and looked up at the middle of the three windows that lined the side of the boat. The thick glass was shattered, the pebblelike shards littering the top of the couch, glittering like diamonds in the cabin’s bright light.

  “A gun is anonymous,” Damon said, his face so close to mine that his breath washed across my cheek. “Dragon fire isn’t.”

  “It’s still wrong,” I said, wishing he weren’t so close, that he didn’t smell so good. Wishing I could just snuggle up a little closer to all his heat and strength and confidence.

  “It’s not the weapon,” he refuted. “Weapons have their place in the world. It’s the reasoning of the man behind it that’s wrong.”

  I shifted to stare at him. “Says the man who kills for a living.”

  “What I do, and what these people do, are two different things.”

  “Both of you have reasons and both of you think they’re good ones. But that doesn’t make either of you right.”

  On the floor, Angus made a whispery noise.

  “Shit, he’s alive,” I said, and scrambled toward him, away from Damon’s grasp. I grabbed the sea dragon’s hand and stared into the blue of his eyes. His flesh was like ice against mine. I tried not to see the blood soaking into the carpet behind his head, and tried to ignore the sensation of death gathering close. “Angus? We’re here. We’ll get help. Just hang on.”

  His mouth opened, and although no words came out, he struggled on, trying to speak. I glanced up at Damon. “We need to get a doctor here.”

  “It won’t do any good, Mercy.”

  “But we just can’t sit here and watch him die!” Although I didn’t raise my voice, the desperate need to do something—anything—to help this man filled it with a hard edge.

  “There’s no dragon medic close by, and we can’t risk human intervention. That could lead to complications with the council neither of us would enjoy.” His voice was as stony as his face. “But even if we did bring in human help, they wouldn’t be able to save him. Look at him. Half his head is gone.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not arguing about this. We’ll wait to see if the shooter comes to investigate his kill, and then we leave.”

  “But someone has to stay here until dawn.” Disbelief and anger ran through me. “Someone needs to be here to guide his soul on. You can’t just leave—”

  “We can, and we must.”

  It was said so coldly that I could only shake my head. “God, you’re an unfeeling bastard.”

  “Death often is.” He said it almost gently, like he was speaking to a child.

  “But you’re not death,” I snapped back. “It’s just your job. It’s not what you are.”

  “Then you see things that no one else does.” Humor touched his tone, but it held an edge that was lightly mocking. “Including me.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I simply glanced back down at Angus. His face was etched with pain and the knowledge of death, but when his gaze met mine, the blue depths were aware and desperate.

  “Coral,” he said, his words slurred and voice hoarse. “You must—”

  “Shhh,” I said, squeezing his fingers. “Just rest. We’ll help her. I promise.”

  “Go to her now. Save her. They’ll kill her.”

  “If they haven’t already,” Damon murmured.

  “No, she lives. I’d know.” Angus gulped down air and his fingers clenched against mine, squeezing them hard enough to hurt. “Moraga Drive. Blue house—”

  His voice faded, and a heartbeat later his eyes rolled back into his head and his grip against my hand suddenly loosened.

  He was dead.

  I blinked back tears as I leaned forward and closed his eyes. This man might have betrayed both Rainey and me, but he didn’t deserve this sort of death, didn’t deserve to be alone when his soul moved on.

  “Damon—”

  “We are not staying here to pray for his soul, Mercy.”

  “If you’d just shut up and let me finish a sentence,” I snapped back, “you’d learn that I was about to ask how quickly we can get to Santa Rosa.”

  Because if we could get Coral free soon enough, then Angus would not be alone come dawn.

  He looked at me like I was crazy. “You’re no
t actually going to attempt this rescue?”

  “I promised—”

  “That’s neither here nor there. By the time we get there, the woman will be dead. They’re obviously getting rid of all possible complications. It’s your own safety you should be worried about.”

  “Except that Santa Rosa is the last place they’d expect me to go, so it’s probably the safest place to be. Besides, she might know something that could help us, and that alone makes it worth trying.” I stared at him mutinously. “I’ll do this alone if I have to.”

  “You’re crazy enough to do it, too,” he muttered, and ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, we’ll rescue this woman. But if she doesn’t have any information, we start doing things my way.”

  “I don’t like your way. It involves killing people.”

  “If I kill them, I can’t get information out of them,” he snapped back. “If we want to get there quickly, the best way to do so is to fly.”

  My heart began to race. Not from excitement but rather from fear. Flying and me weren’t exactly compatible. And I had the scars to prove it.

  “We can’t—”

  “We can take the boat out to sea and fly from there. It’s going to be a cloudy night, so the chances of being seen are low. Especially given we’re black and brown respectively.”

  “That’s not the problem.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Then what is? Are you afraid of the sea?”

  “No. But as I told you before, I can’t fly. I’m a draman without wings.”

  Confusion touched his expression. “But you have every other dragon skill imaginable.”

  “Well, as you keep noting, I’m strange. And I didn’t get the wings.”

  “I said you’re crazy, not strange. Totally different things.” He made a frustrated sound. “And this makes things more difficult.”

  “You could carry me.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You say that like it’s easy.”

  “Well, isn’t it? There’d hardly be all those myths of dragons carrying off virginal women if it wasn’t possible.”

  Humor brightened his eyes. “Ah, but virgins have always held a special place in a dragon’s heart. Something to do with the meat tasting sweeter.”

  And he wasn’t talking about actually eating them, if that smile was anything to go by. I slapped his leg. “I’m trying to be serious here.”

  “Okay, serious question. How much do you weigh and are you a virgin?”

  I raised my eyebrow. “That’s two questions, and why would you need to know the second one?”

  “Because I make a point of not seducing virgins.”

  Meaning he had every intention of seducing me if I wasn’t? My pulse rate danced joyously at the thought.

  “Then you’d be the first dragon in history to do so.” I shifted back from Angus and sat on my heels. “Or is it a muerte thing? The bringer of death not taking innocence, or something like that?”

  “It’s a personal thing.” He glanced up at the window, and frowned. “I don’t want to seduce anyone who might expect more than just a good time, and virgins tend to get a little clingy with their first lover.”

  “Speaking from experience, are we?”

  My voice was dry, and he looked back at me briefly. “No. Just consider it a warning.”

  I snorted softly. “As if any draman actually needs a warning when it comes to dragons, sex, and emotion.” Hell, we learned all too quickly that the latter just didn’t come into the picture when you were a half-breed. “And you’re getting a little ahead of yourself. The whole respect thing I was mentioning before has to be addressed before the whole seduction thing even comes into play.”

  He didn’t answer, and something in the way he was holding himself—a mix of intentness and alert readiness—had tension crawling down my spine. I lowered my voice a little as I asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Footsteps, coming this way.”

  “Could it be the guy Angus referred to when I first stepped onto the boat?”

  He was shaking his head before I’d finished. “There’s at least two men, and their steps are cautious.” He glanced back at me again. “Slip down the stairs to the lower deck. Don’t come up until I say its okay.”

  “Damon, I can help—”

  “This is what I do,” he said coldly. “Please let me do it without having to worry about you.”

  Annoyance flared, but I held it in check, scooting across the floor to the stairs before heading downward. There were four bedrooms here, as well as a large storage area toward the stern. I opened several doors, looking for something I could use as a weapon and finding nothing but wetsuits, flippers, and life jackets. But in the final locker there were several air tanks and a large tool kit. I opened that up, grabbed a heavy-looking wrench, then walked across to the door that led out to a small platform at the back of the boat. I tested the door handle to ensure it was locked, then stepped back into the confines of another locker and waited.

  For too long, nothing happened. But the awareness that someone was close began to grow, sending goose bumps crawling across my flesh. The dragon within stirred, her flame surging through my muscles and causing little sparks to leap across my fingertips. I toned it down, trying not to let whoever was outside know that I was here—although if they were full dragon, they’d probably already know. It was only us draman who couldn’t always sense these things.

  After a few more minutes, the door handle moved. My heart caught in my throat and my breath came in hitches. The handle inched downward then stopped, and the door rattled softly. It was locked, but I had to wonder if that would stop whomever was on the other side.

  A second later I had my answer, with the sound of something jiggling around in the lock. I flexed my fingers then wrapped them tighter around my improvised weapon and waited.

  The door began to move, pushed by fingers that were long, brown, and oddly elegant. When the door was fully open, they withdrew. The silence stretched, tearing at my nerves. My heart was beating a million miles an hour and sweat trickled down my spine. I licked my lips and tried to ignore the fact that my hands were shaking.

  The nose of a gun appeared. My breath caught again and I briefly closed my eyes, fighting the desire to lash out. It was too soon. I needed to see him, not just the weapon.

  Upstairs, there was a thump, and then a curse, the voice dark and dangerous. A stranger’s voice, not Damon’s.

  The hand that held the gun appeared. Whoever this man was, he wasn’t about to be rushed by whatever was happening upstairs.

  I waited, still not daring to breathe, hoping he had as little sense of me as I was getting of him. An arm appeared. My fingers twitched, my palms sweating against the steel of the wrench. He stepped forward, began to turn around, and I knew I’d run out of time, that at any second he’d realize I was hiding there in the shadows.

  I swung the wrench upward rather than down, smashing it into the underside of his wrist, the force of the blow sending the weapon and his arm flying backward. I followed through even as he moved to face me more fully, smacking the wrench into his face. Bone crunched and blood splattered across the walls and my hands. Bile rose but I swallowed hard and swung again, this time hitting him under the chin. His legs collapsed from under him, and he fell face-first onto the floor. I stood back, keeping out of grabbing range even though he was obviously unconscious. My breathing was harsh and tension rippled through me as I waited to see if someone else would come through the door.

  No one did, but that didn’t make it any better. I had no idea what was going on above me—or whether there was someone else waiting outside to pounce.

  So I continued to stand there, my breathing rapid and my fingers bloody, the knuckles almost white with the force of my grip on the wrench.

  No one came. After a few more minutes, my skin began to crawl with awareness, and although I’d heard no sound and could see no one coming down the teak-lined hallway, I knew Damon was near.

  “Mer
cy?”

  His voice sounded so close that I jumped. “Where the hell are you?”

  “On the platform outside the door. I’m coming in. Don’t hit me.”

  “Okay.” But I didn’t relax, keeping the wrench at the ready until he was through the door and it was obvious he was alone. Only then did I lower my weapon. “You okay?”

  He half smiled. “There were only three of them, and they were draman rather than dragon. You?”

  “Just the one, thank God.” I looked down at the man at my feet. “Should we tie him or something?”

  “I’ll need to question them, so yeah. But if they are draman who can flame, then we’ll need to find something a little harder to burn than rope.”

  He stepped over the man and walked across to the storage lockers. I dropped my weapon and pressed two fingers against the man’s neck. His pulse was a little rapid, but it was strong enough, and his nose had already stopped bleeding. If there was one good thing about being draman, it was having a dragon’s healing capabilities.

  I wiped his blood off my hands, using the ends of his shirt as a towel, then rose and stepped away from him again. Damon came back with what looked like a fishing reel.

  “That’s not fireproof,” I commented.

  “No.” He raised the man’s hands so that they were behind his head, then tied them together with the fishing line. Then he looped more around the man’s neck and tied it back to his hands. which meant if the stranger struggled in any way, or tried to slip the line, he’d probably end up garroting himself. “You’ll have to keep an eye on our captives until we get out of the harbor.”

  “You know how to drive a boat this size?”

  “I’ve got one,” he said, and grabbed the man under the shoulders, hauling him as easily as a sack of grain up and over his shoulders. “The sea is a vast place, and sometimes it’s the only way you can get peaceful flying time.”

  I followed him up the stairs. He dumped the man he was carrying on the sofa then tied up the other three, all of whom looked a whole lot less bloody than the man I’d confronted. But then, if Death didn’t know how to drop someone without effort, who would?