Dragon Bound

by Thea Harrison

  Life had sure gone to hell since Dragos had killed her uncle. Oh, Urien had to die, without a doubt. She was glad he was dead. She just wished it could have happened in a couple of decades or so. This business about her becoming the Dark Fae Queen? She was so not in the mood.

  She dumped out the contents of the shopping bags. The items chronicled a long, busy day.

  She’d had a lot to do once she had killed her second cousin Geril and his two cohorts. First item on her agenda was to run away. The second item was to get stuff and keep running. She had walked into a twenty-four-hour pharmacy, bought bandages, a pair of sweatpants, sunglasses and a T-shirt, changed in their bathroom and walked out.

  Sunglasses at midnight. Huh. Idiot.

  Those had gone into her first shopping bag until daybreak. Then she stole a car and drove in aimless circles while she tried to think past the frozen tundra in her head. She stopped at a superstore and bought more stuff, left the stolen car in the parking lot and got a cab, took the cab to the airport where she got another cab, and here she was.

  Her path had been so random, so erratic, made up as it was by stress-induced on-the-spot decisions, that she defied anybody’s ability to figure out where here was. Hell, even she didn’t know where here was, just that she was still somewhere in the greater Chicago area. Neither ride had been long enough to get her anywhere else, more’s the pity. She hadn’t wanted to imprint herself too deeply in the memory of either cabdriver so she had tried to keep both trips as normal as possible. She could always steal a car again and drive away from the area, but first she needed a few hours to recuperate while she considered what her next moves should be. At the moment she was too awash with conflicting impulses, pain and exhaustion to be sure of anything.

  One shopping bag held her crumpled red halter dress and the matching evening bag that carried a compact powder, a lipstick, and her two small stiletto knives. She kept the tips touched with poison and had a variety of places she could wear or carry them, in the side pocket of a purse, strapped to her arms, or underneath her dress and strapped to her thighs.

  Good thing the red color of the dress hid the bloodstains or she might have occasioned more attention at the pharmacy. She set that bag aside. Another bag held an unopened bottle of vodka, a bag of Cheetos, three packs of Marlboro reds and a lighter.

  Say hello to tonight’s hot date. She set it all on the bedside table near the head of the second bed.

  The third bag held a first aid kit, extra bandages, toiletries and underwear. The last bag had jeans, flip-flop sandals, a pair of shorts, a couple of tops, and a dozen wallets.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and inspected the blisters on her heels. Should have changed into the flip-flops as soon as she bought them. Should have bought the flip-flops at the first store and the sunglasses later but all she could think after the attack was, oh gods, I can’t be recognized.

  Shoulda, woulda, coulda. They were the Three Stooges of regret. All they were good for was saying whoop-whoop-whoop and smacking one another over the head.

  She gritted her teeth. She had slapped a temporary bandage on herself when she had changed in the pharmacy bathroom, but she needed to clean and bandage her knife wound properly. Instead she picked up the wallets. They weren’t new wallets. They were other people’s wallets. They were from all the people she had bumped into today, when she had wrinkled her cute widdle nose at them and said sowwy. She bet every last one of them was very unhappy with her right about now.

  Why did she pick pockets and start smoking and drinking when she was under stress? Can we say maladaptive coping mechanisms, class? If she wasn’t careful, she was going to go to prison where people would call her Light-Fingered Stinky.

  She pinched her nose and sighed. She was good at a dog-and-pony show. She could clean up well and pretend to be respectable enough, often for hours, even days at a time. She had, after all, been excellent at her job as head of PR for Cuelebre Enterprises. It was all an act. She had known for a long time now that she was really nothing more than a Sackville-Baggins kind of hobbit.

  She showered first. It was harder and more exhausting than she had counted on. Afterward she sat on the toilet and hissed as she blotted the knife wound with fresh cotton pads. She poked it to see if there were any cloth fibers from her dress or any other kind of dirt still in the wound. Gray stars bloomed in front of her eyes. Damn, that hurt. A deep puncture, it kept seeping a slow, steady stream of crimson.

  She put antibacterial goop on it, doubled up on the padding and taped it in place as best she could. She smeared more goop on the blisters on her heels and put Hello Kitty Band-Aids on them. Then she put on her new underwear. Teeny-tiny little camo boxer shorty-shorts that rode low on the hips. Weren’t they cute?

  The next bit wasn’t so easy. She grunted as she worked her way as carefully as she could into a sports bra. Structurally she may not be very big, but her perky pair of puppies made her a C-cup. Shoulda bought a bra with a front clasp, but today hadn’t been a shining example of her best thinking. Whoop-whoop-whoop, smack. After she managed to get the bra on, she eased on a matching camo spaghetti-strap T-shirt that stopped above her pierced navel.

  Then she put her hair in pigtails. Because it was layered to fall in an outward-flipping bob, the pigtails stood up on her head like twin black starbursts. She pouted at herself in the mirror and said, “Sowwy.”

  Yep. This look is good for several more wallets. NOT that I’m going to steal anymore, because I’m stopping right now. I’m just sayin’.

  And now it was past time for that hot date. She limped to the bed and eased her sore, bruised body onto it, lit a cigarette and flipped on the TV. She started to look through the contents of the stolen wallets. Hey, some of these had good family pics. She pulled out the photos and started to lay them across the bed.

  Then what was playing on the television registered in her tired brain.

  She stared. Put the cigarette in the ashtray. Put down the wallets and photos. Picked up the vodka bottle, opened it and took a stiff drink.

  That was the first time she saw the cell phone video footage of the attack in the alleyway, where she had kicked the crap out of her second cousin Geril’s dead body.

  It wasn’t going to be the last time. Not by a long shot.

  Tiago believed in giving credit where credit was due. The little shit had tried like hell to avoid being tracked down.

  By the time he had reached Chicago, the SUV Rune had requisitioned was waiting for him, along with a detailed list of assorted supplies, including cash, a couple changes of clothes, a laptop and an assortment of his preferred type of weapons. Tiago picked up the vehicle in Lakeview from their Wyr contact, Tucker, who had already stashed the supplies in a large duffel bag in the backseat.

  Tucker was, like his Wyr-badger nature, a short, powerful, stocky and antisocial male. He did well living in relative isolation outside the social structure of the Wyrkind demesne. The badger was content with a job that had sporadic, often strange duties and irregular hours, as long as he could live within walking distance of his beloved Wrigley Field.

  Although Tiago hadn’t thought to ask for one, there was also a cell phone tucked into a side pocket of the large, heavy canvas duffel bag. He discovered it when it rang as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

  He clicked it on. “What.”

  Dragos said, “Preliminary autopsy report is in on the three dead Dark Fae males.”

  His eyebrows rose. “That was fast.”

  “With the next ruler of the Dark Fae demesne missing, the authorities put a rush on the job,” Dragos said. “All the Dark Fae males died of the same kind of poison Tricks favors on her stilettos.”

  Tiago adjusted the seat and pulled into traffic. He grunted. “At least she kept her weapons poisoned when she left New York. Good for her.”

  “The fucker who filmed the footage is cooperating with police,” Dragos said. “He’s claiming he didn’t see anybody else in the vicinity when she took
off down the street.”

  “I want to know where he lives,” said Tiago. He drove fast and aggressively as he glared at the other vehicles on the road.

  “Later. Check out the airport. Security footage shows someone that looks like it could have been her climbing out of a cab.”

  Dragos hung up without saying good-bye. Tiago turned off the phone and tossed it into the passenger’s seat.

  When Urien had assumed control of the Dark Fae government, Tricks had taken sanctuary with Dragos in 1809. While young, she had already reached her adult size. She was small and delicate, even for one of the Fae. She had a mere fraction of the strength the Wyrs had. She also had her uncle Urien, one of the nastiest and most Powerful men in the world, who had been determined to see her dead.

  The Wyr sentinels had proceeded to teach her every dirty trick they could think of in order to help keep her alive, which was where she got her nickname. Nothing was off-limits, or so Tiago had heard. He had been busy elsewhere, helping to keep the peace in Missouri when the Osage signed the Treaty of Fort Clark and ceded their land to the U.S. government.

  Everything added up. She had left the hotel with three males, and three males were dead. She had either been taken from the site of the attack, or she was on the run. Logic said she had gotten away and was on the run.

  But if so, why hadn’t she called New York for backup? Tricks was family. Any of them would gladly have rushed to help her, but she still hadn’t tried to call anybody and she hadn’t replied to any of the phone messages left on her cell.

  Tiago planned on asking her that very question when he caught up with her. She might be hell to track down, but he was old and steeped in Power, and most of his talents were concentrated on the hunt. There wasn’t anything on this Earth he couldn’t track once he put his mind to the task. He recovered lost scent trails, made intuitive leaps no one else would think of, and shit, more often than not, luck just fell his way. It might take him a while, but in the end he always brought down his prey.

  His prey, in the end, appeared to be holed up in a motel room off the I-294 Tri-State Tollway.

  He paused for a moment outside the door and listened. Tricks’s scent was all around on the surrounding sidewalk, but it was close to midnight and he didn’t want to knock on the wrong door by mistake.

  He heard her inside. She was singing in a clear, sweet, pure voice. His eyebrows rose.

  “ ‘Down in the valley, the valley so low, hang your head over, and hear the wind blow . . .’” The singing stopped. He heard her mumble, “Can’t remember what comes next, something, something . . .”

  He grinned as he relaxed and leaned against the doorpost. If she was singing and talking to herself, she wasn’t dead in a ditch. It was all good.

  She said, “Oh, that’s right . . . No, wait, that’s another song. Crap, I’m too drunk.”

  That sounded like his cue. He knocked.

  Silence. He imagined there was a startled quality to it.

  He knocked again. “Tricks, it’s Tiago. Open up.”

  She said with the slow incredulity of the inebriated, “Is that you, Dr. Death?”

  “Come on, open the door.”

  “No, thank you for stopping by. I’m okay. Everything’s okay. It’s all taken care of now. Just don’t watch any TV for a while, okay? You can go back to New York, or wherever it is you lair when you’re not killing things.”

  He scowled. Dr. Death? No, thank you and don’t watch any TV? What the hell did she mean by that? He muttered, “I do not live in a lair.”

  He settled his shoulder against the heavy metal door that was constructed to meet fire safety codes and to keep thieves out. After pushing with a steady increase of pressure, the lock and chain broke.

  Cigarette smoke billowed as the door opened. He coughed, waved a hand in front of his face and stared at the scene inside.

  The motel room was a pigsty. Shopping bags were piled on the bed nearest the door. Tricks lay on her back on the other bed, which was littered with photos, credit cards, and driver’s licenses. She was dressed in some kind of porno version of camouflage, in very short shorts and a tiny, stretchy T-shirt that left her narrow waist bare. Her head was hanging off the end of the bed. She held a bottle of vodka in one small hand. It was significantly low in liquid. She clutched a remote control in the other hand. A cigarette smoldered in a half-full ashtray and an open bag of Cheetos was on the floor.

  Her compact, curvaceous body was laid out like some kind of offering to a pagan god. As someone who had once been a pagan god, he knew what he was talking about, and he definitely appreciated the view. As her head hung over the end of the bed, it accentuated the thrust of round, luscious breasts that curved over a contrasting narrow waist. A gold ring glinted at her navel, just begging to be licked. Her graceful hip bones and the are of her pelvis were outlined by shorts that Congress ought to make illegal. Slender, shapely bare legs tipped with toes painted a saucy pink completed the package, and his appreciative cock swelled to salute every visible, succulent inch of her.

  He glowered, thrown off balance by his own intense, unwelcome reaction. Rein it in, stud. Under the reek of smoke he could smell feminine perfume and—was that the scent of blood?

  “Oh, you shouldn’ta done that,” Tricks said. Large upside-down Fae eyes tried to focus on him. “Breaking and entering. That’s against the law.” She snickered.

  Tiago took refuge from his strange feelings in the much more familiar emotion of aggression. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “What do you mean ‘go back to New York’? Do I smell blood?”

  “I can only answer one question at a time, you know,” she said. With remarkable dignity, considering. “I am hanging my head over to hear the wind blow. I never did get that bit in the lyrics. Who hears the wind blow when they hang their head over? Hang their head over what? What does that even mean? Do you know?”

  He had no idea what she was babbling about. Something about the stupid song she had been trying to sing. He pushed the door shut with a foot and strode over to stub out the smoldering cigarette. “This is disgusting,” he snapped. “Why haven’t you called? We’ve been worried sick about you.”

  “Whoa,” she said. She looked up—or down, as it were—at Tiago’s crotch, which had stopped right in front of her. He was one scary, mean-looking, oversized barbarian, in black jeans, black boots and black leather vest. He bristled with weapons and anger, and muscles bulged everywhere. His crotch sported a significant bulge too. A very significant bulge. She licked her lips. She might be drunk but she wasn’t dead. She wouldn’t be forgetting this sight in a hurry.

  He squatted and suddenly his upside-down face was in front of hers. Obsidian eyes glittered. “Tricks, what the hell? Seriously.”

  She tried to track where that mouthwatering bulge in his crotch had gone, couldn’t, and focused instead on his face. Brown skin, strong hawkish features, and a sensually shaped mouth that more often than not looked like it could cut through concrete. She had always thought he was a proud, aloof man with the longest legs and the sexiest moves she had ever seen. He walked everywhere with a quick, ground-eating, lean-hipped stride.

  “Has anybody ever told you, you look a lot like Dwayne Johnson?” she asked.

  He scowled. “Who the hell is Dwayne Johnson?”

  He tried to take the vodka bottle away from her. She clung to it.

  “You know, the Rock? Hot, sexy football player–wrestling guy turned movie actor? Only . . . you’re a whole lot meaner.” She concentrated very hard, tongue between her teeth, and touched the tip of her forefinger to his scowl. The vodka bottle bumped his nose. He jerked his head out of the way.

  His eyes narrowed on her. Was that male interest in his dark, glittering gaze? She didn’t trust her powers of observation at the moment.

  “Hot, s—” He stopped dead. When he spoke again, his normal growl had dropped to a husky murmur. “You’re comparing me to a movie actor? Fuck yeah, of course I’m a whole lot meaner.�
��

  Huh. Wasn’t he the cock of the walk?

  “Whatever, don’t let it go to your head,” she said with scorn. “You’re not as sexy as I think you are.” She squinted. Wait. That hadn’t come out right. She tried to sort it all out in her vodka-befuddled head. It didn’t help that he gave her a swift white grin that scrambled her brain even further.

  All too soon that grin disappeared. Then Dr. Death was back and scowling again.

  Ooh. Sexy. No, scary. No, sexy. Oh phooey.

  He grabbed her hand. He could feel how delicately formed the bones were. He could crush her so easily. Any one of those Dark Fae males could have snapped her neck effortlessly if they had gotten her in the right hold. He took care to keep his touch gentle, even as he said, “Goddammit, faerie, you’d better start answering some questions.”

  “Or what?” She pointed the remote at him and pushed the mute button. “Pleh. I’m gonna get someone to make me a magical mute that really works.”

  A kind of desperation came over his harsh features. He snatched the vodka bottle from her and took a swig. She watched with acute interest as shock shot across his face. He gagged and spat the mouthful out on the carpet. He glared at the bottle. “Bubble-gum-flavored vodka? Bubble gum?”

  “What? It’s good.” She reached for the bottle.

  He held it out of her reach. “No way.”

  She scowled. “That’s my dinner. You give it back.”

  “Oh no, young lady. You’ve had more than enough.”

  Only a gazillion-thousand-year-old Wyr could get away with calling a two-hundred-year-old faerie “young lady.” Holy cow, he was one devastatingly good-looking barbarian, upside down or not. But so preachy! She remembered the vodka. She reached for it again.

  He stood, grabbed the ashtray and strode for the bathroom. She could just barely see what happened in the corner of the bathroom mirror as he turned the bottle upside down in the sink. There went the rest of her hot date.