by Keri Arthur
He turned and faced me. “Stay next to the stairs. Don’t go near any of them. If they start flaming in any way, call me.”
I nodded. “Can we get the boat out of the harbor without someone coming after us?”
“We’ll find out soon.” His voice was grim. Then he smiled and touched my cheek lightly. “I doubt there are any more henchmen out there right now. Four men to check a dead sea dragon could be considered overkill as it is.”
I resisted the urge to lean into his caress, and stared into his dark eyes instead. It wasn’t hard to find strength in those black depths. “What happens if someone realizes we’re stealing the boat?”
“We deal with it when it happens.” He glanced at his watch. “The moon doesn’t actually rise for another half hour, so it’s not going to be light enough for anyone to see who’s in the boat.”
Unless it was the owner himself. But I held the words in check and nodded. I wanted to keep my promise to rescue Coral, and this seemed to be the best way to achieve that.
He disappeared up to the bridge and I sat down on the stairs to watch the men. A deep rumble soon filled the silence, then lights flared across the stern and we began backing out of the slipway.
Tension slithered through me, and I half held my breath, expecting at any moment to hear someone shouting at us to stop. But we continued to back out, turning as we did, then the boat was moving forward slowly.
No one shouted. No one stopped us. And all too soon we were motoring under the Golden Gate Bridge and heading for open water.
I blew out a relieved breath and glanced at the four men. They were still and silent, yet heat was beginning to caress the air, meaning one of them was surreptitiously attempting to use his flames.
I rose and walked a little closer. Slow waves of heat lapped at my skin, and they were coming off the man lying on the curved end of the couch. Though his eyes were closed and his jaw slack, it was obviously an act. A draman—or a dragon, for that matter—couldn’t flame when unconscious.
His legs had been tied as securely as his arms, so I stopped next to him and touched two fingers to his shoulders. Waves of heat rose, flushing through my fingers and running up my arm, waking my inner dragon and making her hungry.
“Keep flaming,” I said softly, “and I will suck up every ounce of heat you have.”
For a moment he didn’t respond, then carefully he turned his head and looked at me. His neck was red from the tautness of the fishing wire, but wasn’t yet bloody, and his blue eyes were bright with anger.
“You’re draman. I can smell it. Only fucking dragons can do that sort of shit.”
I smiled mirthlessly. “No, some of us draman can, too. Now stop flaming, or I will steal your heat.”
“You’re lying, bitch.”
I raised an eyebrow, then let the dragon loose. She surged forward—an invisible being that was all fire and hunger, twining through my muscles and down into my fingertips, then into him. He jerked when her energy hit him, and his eyes widened in horror as she began to wrap around his inner dragon. But as much as I wanted to revel in the intensity of his flames and draw them back into my body, I didn’t.
“Last warning,” I said softly.
“Okay, okay, I won’t flame.” He said it almost desperately, and I let my fingers drop away. He closed his eyes and let out a breath. Then he muttered. “Fucking bitch.”
“Don’t try it again,” I said, and turned away from him, to find Damon standing on the bottom of the steps, staring at me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked immediately. “And who’s driving the boat?”
“I jammed the steering into place.” He stepped off the stairs and walked toward me, a creature of darkness. The instinctive need to retreat hit, and I actually stepped back a little before I stopped myself. I might not want to be afraid of this man, but he sure could be intimidating at times.
“That’s dangerous—”
“So was your being down here alone.” He stopped in front of me and crossed his arms, his otherwise stony expression touched with the slightest hint of amusement. “However, I didn’t actually realize it would be dangerous for them rather than you.”
“I keep telling you I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, but those scars tend to say otherwise.”
“Hey, I’m alive, and that takes a whole lot of skill in my clique, believe me.” I could almost taste his disbelief, and I wasn’t really surprised. If he didn’t have much to do with draman, then he really wouldn’t have any idea just how badly some of us were treated. “Hadn’t you better go back up and steer the boat before we plow into something? Or someone?”
“I will. But it’s odd that you can do everything a dragon can do except fly. Even your fire control is stronger than that of most dragons I know.”
I shrugged. “I guess I just lucked out on the good stuff.”
He frowned, suggesting again that he didn’t really believe me, but all he did was turn and head back up the stairs. I walked to the small galley, making myself some coffee while keeping my senses tuned for the caress of energy that would indicate one of our captives was again trying to escape. Thankfully, they restrained themselves.
With the coffee made, I headed back to my perch on the stairs and contemplated the sanity of making a promise to a man who had basically betrayed both me and my best friend. Yet I couldn’t regret it. These men had taken too many lives already, and while Angus might not be lily-white himself, his mate didn’t deserve to die for his sins.
Besides, she just might hold some much needed answers. I didn’t think our captives would end up being very useful in the information game. Dragons tend not to tell draman the greater details of whatever operation they are involved in. We are only the grunts—fine for the dirty work and highly expendable, but never deemed suitable for anything more. Of course, that could be my personal bias speaking—I really had as little to do with other cliques as Damon had with draman.
The boat surged on through the night. I finished my coffee, then rummaged through the cupboards for something to eat. I ended up munching on some health bars while three of the four men on the couch glared at me balefully. All three had bloody slashes around their necks—testament to the fact that they’d tried escaping their bonds. None of them had tried to flame and escape, though. Maybe the other two hadn’t been as unconscious as I’d presumed.
Eventually, the boat stopped and the engines fell silent. Chains clinked softly and the boat began to rise and fall gently with the waves. I glanced up, then shifted, as Damon began to make his way down the stairs.
“Where are we?”
“Far enough away from civilization that swimming would be unwise.” He touched my shoulder lightly as he passed, and gave me a look that was all warning. Don’t interfere, it said. Or else.
I swallowed heavily but nodded, and watched as he walked toward the man who’d tried to flame earlier. With little effort, Damon dragged him upright and bunny-hopped him toward the door. After opening it, he forced the man out onto the aft deck. I took a step forward, then stopped. We needed to know what information these men held, and we needed to know it fast if we were to be of any use to Coral. And Damon couldn’t actually get those answers if he killed them first.
But if he killed one, the others might just open up.
I shoved the thought away and hoped like hell it was wrong. I hoped that somewhere within that deep, dark, and dangerous interior there was a person who wasn’t just a killer.
Damon hopped his prisoner to the railing, then switched his grip, holding on to his hands while leaning him out over the sea. In that position, the fishing line had to be cutting into the draman’s neck, and although I couldn’t see any blood from where I stood, the tang of it touched the air.
“Start talking,” Damon said softly, his voice devoid of anything but ice, “or we’ll see just how long a man whose hands and feet are tied can remain afloat.”
The man made a few odd noises that seemed little mor
e than expressions of pain. Damon eased up on his grip a little, meaning the wire wasn’t so tight.
“What?” he said.
“I don’t know nothing!” the man said, the words so rushed they practically ran together. “He just phones me, gives me the job, and I do it.”
“Who phones you?”
“I don’t know his real name.”
“What do you call him, then?”
“Sir!”
Damon pushed him out over the railing again. “Really?”
“Really. For fuck’s sake, I’ve no reason to lie!”
“Then how are you paid?”
“Something called Frederick Enterprises pays it directly into my account.”
Damon glanced at me. “What do you think?”
“He’s not lying.” He was too scared to lie.
So was I. My heart seemed to be pounding somewhere in my throat and my fingers were twitchy. Although in my case, it wasn’t so much fear of the man but fear of what he might do.
Damon raised an eyebrow, but pulled the man back from the edge again. “What clique do you come from?”
“Jamieson. Jesus, man, I was just hired for the hit, you know?” Blood was staining the collar of his pale shirt.
Then his answer sank in and my stomach lurched. These men were from my clique? I’d never seen them before, but I guess that didn’t mean anything. Not only did Jamieson have a huge population of draman, but many of them left well before adulthood, either to escape the abuse or to find something better. And this man looked several years older than me, so he would have been in a different crèche.
“So you’ve worked for these people before?” Damon asked.
“Shit, yeah. Been getting work off and on for two months now.”
Two months. The first cleansing had happened about two months ago. Coincidence? I suspected not.
“Doing what?”
The man shrugged, then winced as the movement forced the wire deeper into his already bleeding neck. “Whatever they wanted. Shooting, burning, whatever.”
I closed my eyes. So he was involved.
And the truth was, he probably did deserve whatever Damon decided to dish out to him. And yet I knew if he decided to drop the man into the ocean, I’d try to rescue him. Not because he deserved to be saved, but simply because, if he was offering no threat, killing him was nothing more than murder. And that still wasn’t something I wanted on my conscience, no matter how right the reason.
Did that make me weak in Damon’s eyes? More than likely.
“How do you make contact once the job is done?” Damon asked.
“There’s a card in my wallet. Take it.”
With his free hand, Damon pulled the wallet out of the man’s back pocket and tossed it to me. I caught then opened it. There were tons of business cards inside. This guy obviously had a moneymaking business. “Which one?”
“Black one. Red writing. Jesus, ease up on the wire! I’m being honest here.”
“If you were an honest man,” Damon said, “you wouldn’t have been involved in mass slaughters.”
Our captive didn’t say anything. But then, the dangerous edge in Damon’s voice would have scared even the strongest soul.
I flicked through the cards until I found a black one with red writing. “It says—in somewhat pretentious gothic print, I might add—Deca Dent. Under that is a number.” I looked up at him. “What the hell is Deca Dent? A name or a place? And how is that related to the guy who pays you?”
Damon gave his captive a shake, and he stammered, “Deca Dent is a bar. I have no idea how the bar and the man are related to the money or my jobs. I get paid, and that’s all that matters.”
I shoved the card in my pocket and resisted the urge to ask about all his victims, and whether they’d mattered. It was obvious that they hadn’t.
Which made me study Damon and wonder if there was anything that mattered to him. Or whether I was looking at two sides of the same coin. One light, one dark, and both intent on doing the job and caring for little else.
“Is the man at the bar draman or dragon?” Damon asked.
“Dragon.”
“And is he the man in charge of the whole operation?”
“I told you, I don’t know. He just gives me my orders and I report to him when I’m done. I swear, that’s it.”
“And has he got an elegant-sounding voice?” I asked.
Damon glanced at me, then shook the man when he didn’t immediately answer. “Not really. It’s more gruff than elegant. Please, the wire is fucking hurting.”
“You can thank my lovely assistant for the fact that that’s all it’s doing,” Damon said, and frog-hopped him back to the lounge.
He repeated the process with the other three men, but none of them had anything else to add. The first man was obviously the brains of this outfit. Or at least, the one who made contact.
“What are we going to do with them?” I said as Damon pushed the last man back into place.
“We stop them from escaping.”
I frowned. “The minute we leave, they’re going to flame themselves loose.”
“Not if they haven’t got any flame to begin with,” he answered, and then touched the last man lightly on his forehead.
Damon closed his eyes and power began to crawl through the air. It was dark, that power—as dark and as dangerous as the man wielding it.
The man he was touching screamed—a short, sharp sound that was filled with pain and fear. I swallowed heavily, my gaze jumping between the two men, wondering what the hell Damon was actually doing. The man was alive—I could see him breathing—but he looked as if someone had ripped his heart out.
What the hell was Damon doing to him?
He moved on to the next man. I frowned and stepped forward, touching the first man lightly on the shoulder. His flesh was icy, even through the thickness of his shirt. But it was more than just the chill of stolen fire, and my stomach did an odd flip-flop.
No, I thought, he couldn’t have. I reached down inside myself and unleashed the dragon, letting her energy swirl into the stranger. But instead of fire, she found nothing. Not even the broken, scattered ashes where once the soul of a dragon had lived.
He hadn’t just stolen his heat, as I’d threatened to do. He’d completely erased it.
“How is that possible?” I murmured as I glanced at Damon, feeling sick. “How can you extinguish someone’s very essence?”
He didn’t open his eyes. “Any fire can be put out, Mercy. You just have to know how.”
I swallowed heavily, but it didn’t ease the dryness in my throat. “Can you do that to full dragons as well?”
“It’s harder, but yes.” He dropped his fingers from the last man and looked at me. “It beats killing them, doesn’t it?”
“But—”
“They’re alive, Mercy. They just can’t flame.”
“For now, or forever?”
He hesitated. “Draman do not need flames or wings.”
“Of course not. After all, what right have we got to be able to protect ourselves against you lot?” I snorted softly. “You really have no understanding of what goes on in cliques, do you?”
“And you have no idea just how close the cliques are to being exposed,” he snapped, then made a visible effort to control himself before adding, “Let’s not get into this argument again. If you want to rescue this woman, we need to get moving.”
He went back out onto the deck without waiting for me. I grabbed the backpack, checked that the netbook was still in one piece, then followed. It was a large space, but there wasn’t enough room for a dragon to stand, let alone unfurl his wings.
“You can’t shift shape here,” I commented.
“I know.” His voice was almost absent as he studied the darkness off to our left. The breeze ruffled his dark hair and a half smile touched his lips. “The wind is strong tonight. It’ll help me lift you.”
“Just promise not to drop me.”
I couldn’t help the edge of fear in my voice and he looked at me, his smile growing, once again lending his otherwise arrogant features a delicious warmth. “There may be a lot of things I want to do to you, but dropping you isn’t one of them.”
His gaze burned with sudden desire, and warmth crept into my cheeks even as part of me basked in the heat of that look. “Oh, I’ve seen some looks thrown my way that suggest you’d love to do that very thing. Drop me from a height, that is.”
“Only when you’re being so frustratingly stubborn.”
I smiled. “Which is a lot, according to you.”
“That’s true.” He gripped the railing of the ladder leading up to the steering deck. “Once I take off, climb to the nose of the boat. I’ll swoop down and grab you.”
“Just you watch where you put those claws,” I said, crossing my arms and trying not to think about all the things that could go wrong. “I do not need any more scars, thank you very much.”
“If I pierce you with one of my claws, you’ll be dead.” He grabbed the rail and climbed up to the next level.
I moved to the back of the boat, leaning my butt against the railing in hopes I could see what was happening above. The roof made that impossible, but the burn of energy across my skin told me he was shifting shape. I closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation while trying to ignore the longing that welled up from within. I might have learned long ago that I would never experience the freedom of shifting shape and skimming the wide-open skies, but that never eased the desire for it.
There was a whoosh of air as wings unfurled and began to sweep across the night. A second later, an inky shape appeared in the starlit sky.
And oh, he was so beautiful.
The moonlight glinted off his dark scales, making it seem as if his sleek, powerful body was covered in a million stars. His wings were black gossamer, almost invisible against the sky except for the shimmer that ran down the edges with every stroke as he powered upward. And he was big for a dragon—a big, powerful beast who looked as deadly as the man.
I sighed—a sound that was part admiration and part frustration at not being able to join him in flight—then walked to the ladder and began to climb.