by Jane Godman
He lifted his head as a hand slipped into his.
“I know you loved him.” Hollie’s face was wet as she raised his palm to her cheek.
“I love you more.” He gained strength from the words.
She clung to him. “When I saw you fall from that window, I thought I’d lost you.”
He wrapped the blanket around them both and held her until his heartbeat was restored to normality. “Are you okay?” He looked around him to where Dalton Hilger was sitting on the grass with his head in his hands. Renewed anger pounded through him. “Did he hurt you? There was blood in Khan’s hotel suite...”
She gave a shaky laugh. “It was Dalton’s blood. Karina scratched him.”
“She did?” Khan, who was standing nearby, overheard. “That’s my girl.” His face hardened as he looked at Dalton. “What’s happening with that guy? He kidnapped my daughter...and you, Hollie. But...my daughter.”
“Maybe we should hand him over to the FBI. Let the human forces of law and order deal with their own,” Torque said. “He can try and explain his involvement in the fires by telling them his partner was a dragon. Who knows? They may even listen.”
Dalton took his hands away from his face. Across the distance between them, Torque could see the fury in his eyes. “You did this.” Dalton’s voice shook. “If it wasn’t for you...”
Reaching behind him into the waistband of his pants, he withdrew a hidden gun. He aimed it at Torque, but two shots rang out almost simultaneously. The one Dalton fired missed Torque by inches.
A look of surprise replaced the furious expression on Dalton’s face and he toppled forward. Behind him, Finglas held the gun he had taken from Dalton in the apartment.
“I thought he might try something like that,” Finglas said. “I decided not to wait around and see if he was bluffing.”
Ged stepped forward to check Dalton. “Dead.” He looked around. “Which leaves us with an issue. We have two bodies here and I’m guessing the authorities may want to know what the dragon story that will be hitting the media any time now is all about. If they don’t, the press will. Even if my claim that it’s promo for the new album holds, it will draw a lot of attention our way. We should probably get out of here and do something about these bodies.”
Torque got to his feet, clutching his injured side. Alban’s claws had cut deep and the gash was still bleeding. “Alban may not have earned an honorable departure from this world, but I choose to give him one. His ashes must be scattered on the soil of our homeland.”
“For the time being, would you settle for going back to the hotel so Hollie can tend to your wounds? You can trust me to deal with Alban’s body with sensitivity and also leave this scene free from any trace of our presence,” Ged said.
Torque nodded. “Very well.”
Khan drove Torque, Hollie, Sarange and Karina back to the hotel. Ged, Finglas, Dev and Diablo remained at the scene of the dragon fight. Torque didn’t know the details of what they were doing, but he knew Ged would be true to his word. When he had finished, there would be no trace of the dragon fight or of Beast’s presence. The following afternoon, they would leave Denver and set off on the final stage of the tour.
Hollie’s head flopped wearily against Torque’s shoulder as they completed the short drive in silence. When Khan pulled into the hotel’s underground parking lot, she stretched and yawned.
“You haven’t told me what happened when you took Deigh out to dinner.”
“Ah, hell.” Torque ran a hand through his hair. “I’d forgotten all about her.”
* * *
Hollie bit her lip as she knelt on the floor and studied the wound in Torque’s left side. “This needs stitches.”
“I can’t go to a hospital.” He was seated on the bed and he flinched as he moved his arm. “But there is a medical kit in my suitcase.”
She attempted a smile. Given everything that had happened, she thought it worked pretty well. “You bring along a suture kit just for this sort of eventuality?”
He grinned. “It happens more often than you’d imagine.”
Her lip wobbled and she took a moment or two to get it under control. “I’ve never stitched anyone’s skin before, Torque. I don’t want to hurt you.”
He used his right hand to grip her chin, tilting her face up to him so he could drop a kiss onto the end of her nose. “I need you to help me heal. And once you stitch me up, I’ll heal fast. Shifter DNA,” he explained in response to her look of inquiry. “It works quicker than the human kind.”
Torque explained where the medical kit was, and once she had it, Hollie took it through to the bathroom and arranged its contents on the counter beside the sink. Returning to the bedroom, she took Torque’s hand and he leaned on her as she helped him through to the other room.
“This will sting.” The gaping cut in his side looked even worse in the harsh fluorescent light.
Torque gripped the sink hard as she poured antiseptic onto a swab and cleaned the wound. Beads of sweat broke out on his brow and he trembled violently.
Hollie bit her lip as she cleared the blood away and viewed the damage. It was even worse than she’d thought. The razor-sharp talons had penetrated deep, tearing through flesh and muscle as Alban had sliced into Torque’s side with full force. It was a devastating injury.
Having thoroughly cleaned the wound to prevent any infection, she turned to the suture kit, checking the instructions carefully. The pack included a syringe and a local anesthetic. Taking a deep breath, she injected this into the area around the wound in Torque’s side.
Forcing herself to remain calm, she prepared the needle and suture material. “Okay. I’m going to stitch you up now.”
Torque smiled. “You say the nicest things.”
“You do not want to make me laugh while I’m approaching you with a needle in my hand,” she warned. Bending over her task, she managed to complete it quickly and effectively. “There. It may not be the neatest, but you no longer have a hole in your side.”
Torque studied his reflection in the mirror. “Looks fine to me.”
Hollie placed a dressing over the stitches and secured it in place. Then she gave Torque two painkillers washed down with a glass of water, before helping him back to the bedroom.
“I’m not completely helpless.” He was torn between laughter and frustration.
“So you can get your own underwear on, can you?” She faced him with her hands on her hips, a teasing smile on her lips as she studied his naked body.
He held up his right hand in a gesture of surrender. “Um...maybe not.”
Having helped him into his boxer briefs, she led him to the bed, drawing back the bedclothes so he could ease himself down.
“Where are you going?” he asked as she walked away. “I need you next to me.”
“Give me two minutes. I just have to dispose of the medical waste.”
He nodded sleepily. Having tidied up in the bathroom, cleaned herself up and stripped down to her underwear, Hollie slid into bed. The sound of his rhythmic breathing told her Torque was already asleep. After the events of the day just gone, she didn’t expect to join him, but as she turned out the bedside light, slumber was already tugging at the edges of her consciousness.
* * *
The beat was so loud Torque could hear it in his teeth. A slow, heavy pounding. Half-time, slower than a human heartbeat, maybe more like that of a whale. Every light went out, plunging the huge arena into darkness. Screams and cries from the audience filled the night. Slow, lazy guitar chords joined the drumbeats.
Above the stage, a single beam became a whirling series of colored lights. Flashing, red-green, yellow-blue. Within the indistinct patterns, a shape began to emerge. Pure, pulsing light became a creature of fire and scales. As the beat picked up and the guitar faded, the dragon in the sky roared once, shooting a str
eam of fire over the heads of the stunned crowd.
Blackness reigned once more, and then the lights focused on Khan as he screeched out the opening lines of the final number. Los Angeles. Seventeen thousand people. The last night of the tour. The dragon special effect was Ged’s way of answering the media frenzy that had followed the Denver dragon fight.
We are Beast. We gave you werewolves, tigers and other shifters in Marseilles. Now it’s time for dragons.
As they bounded off the stage, Torque didn’t feel his usual sense of elation. This time there was only relief. He was thankful the performance was over and was experiencing a sense of freedom now that this nightmare tour was finally at an end.
The whole band was staying at Khan and Sarange’s luxury Beverly Hills mansion. Hollie and Sarange had left the performance as soon as it finished so they could prepare a celebratory meal. There had been times during this tour when Torque wondered if they would ever make it to this point. Now his thoughts were on the future and what it might look like.
There hadn’t been any police backlash from the events in Denver. Ged had ensured that the scene was scrupulously clean. The following day, he had drawn Torque and Hollie’s attention to an online news report about a body found in a fifth-floor Denver apartment. The man, identified as former FBI agent Dalton Hilger, had died from a single gunshot wound. The room in which he was killed had been prepared as though for an arson attack. Investigations were ongoing and included the possibilities that Hilger, already under investigation for the killing of a senior officer, was responsible for a series of fires over a number of years and that he had been shot by an accomplice.
There was, of course, the issue of the bizarre dragon fight that had gone viral on social media. In Marseilles, Ged had done everything he could to play down the incident, assuring fans that it was an experimental special effect and there would be no repeat performance. This time, so many people at the fairground had filmed the spectacular beasts in the sky above Denver that he had been forced to take a different approach.
Refusing to name the digital geniuses responsible for the aerial display, Ged had given several interviews, simply stating that it was a promotion for Beast’s new album. Luckily, he already had a reputation for being enigmatic and Beast was known for its commitment to its privacy. Ged had then arranged several other dragon-themed displays, including the one at the performance they had just given. They were intended as a distraction, but he suspected the questions would remain about how the animation in Denver had been achieved.
When they arrived at the house, Sarange had already sent the caterers away. If the team she employed to provide food for the party found anything strange in the meal they were asked to provide, Torque guessed they had been too professional to comment. Or too well paid. Meat, fish and salad—and plenty of it—was arranged on tables at the side of the swimming pool. The elegant gardens were the perfect place to unwind.
He sought out Hollie, who looked delectable in a flowered sundress, and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her off her feet. Although the wound in his side twinged, it was already healing. “The tour from hell is over.”
“It wasn’t all bad.” Her smile sent electrical currents zinging through his bloodstream. “I can think of a few memorable moments. Some of the hotel rooms we stayed in will always have a special place in my heart...and so will some of the forests.”
“Let’s take a vacation.” He hadn’t thought about the immediate future until now, and it was a spur of the moment suggestion. “Where do you want to go? Anywhere in the world.”
“I may have some thoughts about that, but I’ll tell you later.”
When he pushed her to elaborate, she shook her head mysteriously and led him to the drinks table. At least Hollie hadn’t said the words he was dreading. She hadn’t told him that tonight would be their last night together. But at some point soon they would have to have that conversation about the future. About how they could be together as humans, but how they couldn’t have forever. And they would have to talk about children. He had watched her with Karina and seen how much she loved the little girl. Hollie would be a wonderful mother, but dragon-shifters would never accept those who were not pure of blood. Unless their parents were both dragon-shifters, their children would be outcasts. Torque was not prepared to bring a child into the world knowing he, or she, would be a misfit. He didn’t think Hollie would do that to a child, either. Would she be prepared to face a future without a family of her own? It was yet another shadow hanging over them.
Even as he took Hollie’s hand and enjoyed the prospect of a vacation during which they didn’t need to look over their shoulders, his heart was heavy at the thought that this happiness could be on borrowed time.
* * *
Khan and Sarange made their announcement about the new baby to laughter and jokes.
“Did you think we hadn’t guessed?” Dev raised his glass, anyway. “All that running out of the room and the sound of throwing up was kind of a giveaway.”
While everyone was crowded around their hosts, Hollie approached Ged, who was standing slightly apart from the group. “Can I ask you a question?”
He smiled down at her. “Always.”
She took a deep breath. “In your alpha-male world, have you ever heard of a dragon-shifter being proposed to by a human?”
“Now, that’s a question.” His gaze went over her head to where Torque was standing with Khan. “And the answer is no. No, I have never heard of that.”
“Oh.” Hollie considered his response in silence. She wasn’t entirely surprised, but she had hoped there might be a precedent.
“Why are you asking me this, Hollie? Torque already approached me about the dragon mark.”
“You told him I would have to walk through fire to receive his bite, didn’t you?” Ged nodded. “That’s the problem. It’s the whole alpha-male thing. No matter how much Torque wants us to be together, he won’t do anything that puts me in danger.”
“I see. So you are planning to take the initiative away from him.”
“Yes. Of course, he may just refuse.”
Ged regarded her in fascination. “What would you do then?”
She smiled. “Walk into a fire, of course. Then he’d have to rescue me and he could bite me while we were there. But it would be so much easier if he’d just accept my proposal. Don’t you agree?” He started to laugh and she watched him with a bemused expression. “What did I say that was so funny?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking that the dragon has finally met his match.”
Torque came over to them then. “Are you two hatching secrets?”
“You could say that.” Ged kissed Hollie’s cheek. “Good luck.”
“Good luck?” Torque watched as Ged walked away. “Why do you need luck?”
She took his hand. “Let’s go somewhere private so I can tell you.”
His expression was somewhere between confusion and trepidation as she led him to their luxurious bedroom. When she closed the door and turned to face him, her heart was trying to hammer its way out of her chest. Telling herself she had to go for it, she launched into a speech without being entirely sure what she was going to say.
“When you said you’d find a way for us to have forever, why didn’t you tell me about the dragon mark?”
He muttered an exclamation. “I suppose it was Ged who told you about that?”
She shook her head at him. “Don’t try to change the subject. And don’t do that dragon frown at me, Torque. I asked you a question first.”
His sigh seemed to come from the depths of his soul. “Did Ged explain what the dragon mark entails? That, unlike when another shifter species asks their mate to convert, it is much more than just a bite. Before you received my mark, you would have to walk into a pit of fire to demonstrate your allegiance.” His voice was tortured. “I could never ask you to do th
at.”
“When the Pleasant Bay Bar was on fire, you walked through the flames to rescue me. If I stepped into a fire pit, surely the effect would be the same? You would be there to protect me.”
“That was different. Your life was in danger and I had no choice. This time I would be asking you to do it.” Torque’s expression was anguished. “I can’t do it, Hollie. I can’t send you into a blaze not knowing for certain I can get you out of it.”
“Then I’ll make it easier for you.” Slowly, with her heart pounding out a wild tattoo, she went down on one knee.
“What are you doing?” The words were a growl, originating somewhere deep in his chest.
“Well, if we were both human, I’d be proposing marriage. But since you’re a shifter, I’m asking you to give me your dragon mark.” She swallowed the constriction in her throat. “Be my mate, Torque. Give us forever.”
“Hollie, you don’t know what you’re asking.” He stepped closer.
“I do. I’m clear on the details. Fire and fangs.” She took his hand, holding the palm against her cheek. “If you don’t say yes, I may as well walk into that fire pit, anyway. You don’t want eternity without me, but I don’t want a human future where I have to watch you hurting. I don’t want half a life.”
He gave a shaky laugh. “Are you trying to blackmail me?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes, my dragon...” She gasped as he hauled her to her feet, crushing her tight to his chest.
“You win.” Torque’s lips were hot and hard on hers. “I’m going to throw you into a fire. Then I’m going to bite the hell out of you.”
“That’s what I love about dragons. You are so romantic.” Hollie melted against him, returning his caresses with a fervor that matched his own. “That answers the question of where I want to go on vacation. Take me to Scotland. We can scatter Alban’s ashes and then have ourselves a honeymoon.”
“We’ll leave in the morning.”
Chapter 21
Deep in the heart of the mountain, the fire leaped and twirled in a fiery dance, its glowing embers twinkling like stars in the heated atmosphere. Each time Hollie tried drawing a breath, the air was hotter and her chest grew tighter. This was the place where it all began. The pit where the Cumhachdach and the Moiteil were born.