by Tessa Adams
Praise for Dark Embers
“Written in a compelling voice, Dark Embers introduces a sexy and intriguing new world. I’m looking forward to seeing where Tessa Adams takes her dragons next.”
—Nalini Singh, New York Times bestselling author of Archangel’s Kiss
“Dark Embers is a blistering-hot, fast-paced adventure that will leave readers breathless. Dylan and Phoebe have great chemistry and a romantic story that will captivate you and keep you turning pages long into the night. I’m really looking forward to the next book in the series!”
—Anya Bast, New York Times bestselling author of Wicked Enchantment
“This darkly seductive tale will have you longing for a dragon of your very own.”
—Shiloh Walker, national bestselling author of Broken
“The first Dragon’s Heat romantic fantasy is a wonderful shape-shifter tale…. Fans will enjoy soaring with dragons.”
—Harriet Klausner, Genre Go Round Reviews
“Dark Embers is a fantastic debut to a new erotic paranormal series that will take you on a scorching-hot adventure and leave you wanting more…. There was even a moment I felt myself get teary eyed—in an erotica, people!”
—Among the Muses
“If you’re looking for a fast paranormal read featuring suspense, hot shifters, and even hotter sex, then look no further.”
—Smexy Books
ALSO BY TESSA ADAMS
Dark Embers
HIDDEN EMBERS
A DRAGON’S HEAT NOVEL
TESSA ADAMS
HEAT
HEAT
Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Heat, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Tracy Deebs-Elkenaney, 2011
All rights reserved
HEAT is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Adams, Tessa.
Hidden embers: a dragon’s heat novel/Tessa Adams.
p. cm—(Dragon’s heat; 2)
ISBN: 9781101483169
1. Shapeshifting—Fiction. 2. New Mexico—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.O57H53 2011
813'.6—dc22 2010052159
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
For Shellee Cruz and Emily McKay,
two of the best writing pals a girl could ever ask for
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank all the people at NAL who work on my books, especially the incredibly talented people in the art department, who give me such amazing covers.
My wonderful, amazing and brilliant editor, Jhanteigh Kupihea, for believing in me and the Dragonstars. She is always there to bounce ideas off and is always willing to let me try something a little different. Her enthusiasm and talent has made writing the Dragon’s Heat novels an absolute joy and they are definitely better for her hard work and suggestions.
My dear friend Sherry Thomas, who always makes me laugh (and brings me chocolate cake when the situation is dire).
My fantastic agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, for everything she’s done for me, and especially for putting up with endless phone calls and e-mails, so many of which begin with, “So, I have this really great idea….”
My wonderful fans, whose support of and fascination with the Dragonstars I appreciate more than I can say. Your comments and e-mails make it a million times easier, and more rewarding, for me to write these books.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
He was tired.
So tired that he could barely hold his head up.
So tired that he didn’t have the energy to finish the chart he was working on.
So tired that even the act of breathing seemed like a chore.
Rubbing his hands over his face, Quinn Maguire tried to fight against the despair that was his constant companion.
He failed.
It weighed him down, made his movements slow and clumsy as it pressed in on him from every side. When was this going to be over? When was he finally going to be able to stop fighting?
After scrawling his initials on the line at the bottom of the chart, he shoved back from his desk and walked over to the window that stretched the length of one of his office walls.
Outside the desert was dark and peaceful, the city lights far enough away that the stars glittered against the ebony blanket of the night. The sight almost always soothed him, but tonight it wouldn’t. He could feel it.
&n
bsp; His eyesight was keen enough that he could see the night predators shadowed against the blackness, his hearing good enough that he could listen to their prey as they scrambled across the rapidly cooling sand in an effort to get away.
But there would be no escape for them. There never was. If his years on this planet had taught him nothing else, they had taught him that much. You couldn’t escape your destiny.
Like him. He would be fighting forever. It was, after all, the nature of the beast.
Never in his 471 years had his nature, his abilities, his limitations, been so hard to accept.
Four hundred and seventy-one years. He closed his eyes, leaned his head against the cool glass. And wondered how he was supposed to survive another four hundred years. How he was supposed to survive another day when his every instinct demanded that he end things, now, while he still could.
Perhaps that was his destiny as well.
What did he have to live for, anyway? His lover was dead, and while he hadn’t been mated with Cecily, he had cared deeply for her. Two of his three brothers were dead. Four of his closest friends were dead.
Thousands of his people were dead—a number that was growing larger with every month that passed.
And there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Nothing he could do to stop any of it.
All those years of training, all the time he’d spent honing his gifts—wasted. Because now, when he needed the knowledge most, it was gone. Or, worse, was so useless against this latest threat that it was as if it had never been.
He was useless, ineffectual, his power nothing but a joke in the face of the crisis ripping through his clan at an alarming rate.
Was this it, then? he wondered. Nearly half a millennium of life boiled down to nothing in a matter of months? Was illness and exhaustion and crushing disappointment all there was?
If so, what was he still doing here?
Why was he still fighting?
For the first time in centuries, he didn’t have an answer.
Inside him, his beast screamed in agony. Battered at the walls he kept around it in an effort to get out. Raked sharp claws down the inside of his skin as it fought for its very survival.
It sensed what Quinn’s mind was only beginning to comprehend: he had no purpose on this earth anymore, no meaning. No matter what he tried, no matter how hard he fought, no matter how many antidotes he came up with, his people were dying. And it was his fault.
He glanced over at his computer screen—at the magnified results of the latest tests he’d run. The virus was still impervious to his attempts to immunize against it. His best ideas on how to stop its spread had only multiplied the infected cells, as if whoever had designed the disease had anticipated his every attack. He didn’t know why he was surprised. It wasn’t as if this was the first time they’d thwarted him.
It was becoming a regular occurrence—his enemy was too determined, too insidious, too clever, and he was not clever enough.
Quinn deliberately turned his back on the computer and his newest research and eyed the cabinets across the room instead. Inside him, the beast roared in protest, but he shoved the thing back down. He took two halting steps across the carpet toward the built-ins.
Inside was every manner of medical device—medicines, bandages, scalpels and forceps for surgery. He imagined what it would feel like to grab a scalpel and plunge it straight into his jugular—and was vaguely surprised when the thought didn’t bother him nearly as much as it should have. Yes, dragons usually healed quickly—very quickly—but would that be enough to repair a mortal wound, especially if he didn’t try to heal it?
He was across the room, his hand reaching to open one of the cupboards, before he finally regained control, finally stopped himself as the dragon screamed inside him. He thought of Dylan and Phoebe, Gabe and Logan, Michael and Shawn and Tyler—and despised himself for even thinking of taking the coward’s way out. He might have lost all hope, but his friends, his clan mates, hadn’t. Was he really selfish enough to off himself and take even that small grain of hope away from them?
His hand fell back to his side, sharp talons poking through his fingertips before he could stop them. No, he wasn’t that selfish. Wasn’t that pathetic.
At least not yet.
He wouldn’t kill himself and leave Dylan to clean up the mess. He owed his king far too much to take the easy way out.
And yet the despair swamped him, overwhelmed him, until all he could see or hear or feel was the utter darkness of it. Sinking to the floor, he laid his head on his knees and prayed for some idea of what he should do next. But as with so many of his prayers of late, this one went unanswered.
CHAPTER ONE
“That was the worst one yet.” Quinn kept his voice level through sheer will, though everything inside him was screaming for release, for revenge.
“Each case seems to be a little worse than the one before it,” agreed Phoebe Quillum, his research partner and the clan’s soon-to-be-queen. Her normally clinical voice was tempered with so much sympathy, it nearly suffocated him. “As if every full-blown infection mutates the virus just enough to make the suffering worse for whoever contracts it next.”
“Not surprising when you think of the bastards who created this thing. Silus probably had his mad scientists do it on purpose.”
“There’s no ‘probably’ about it, Quinn. They had to have engineered it this way. There’s no other explanation for how this is happening—sure, viruses mutate, change, all the time. But this one does it in an incredibly complex pattern. Its abilities have to be manufactured, the result of genetic engineering.”
He hadn’t thought he could feel any worse than he already did. Trust Phoebe to change that. She always knew just what to say.
“This can’t keep going on.” His fist came down so hard on the crash cart that he dented the thing. “If we can’t get inside its walls, then we have to find a way to immunize against it. I don’t know how many more of these deaths I can sit through.”
“It’s far too sophisticated for a virus—even one that was manufactured in a lab.” Phoebe hadn’t even heard him. She was muttering now, taking notes on the small pad of paper that went everywhere with her, and he knew she was talking as much to herself as she was to him. “It has the brutality and quickness of Ebola coupled with the sophistication of lupus. Which doesn’t make sense, even after looking at it under a microscope and taking it apart for months like we have. If they could create this damn thing in a lab, we should be able to tear it apart in much the same way. I can’t believe the Wyvernmoon scientists are really that much further ahead medically than we are.”
Quinn didn’t respond, but his entire body tightened at the mention of the enemy clan. For centuries the Wyvernmoons had been trying to wipe the Dragonstar clan out of existence, but it wasn’t until recently—until their king had hit on this damn virus as a weapon of annihilation—that they’d had any success. Of course, Silus was dead now, killed by Phoebe a few weeks before, but the virus was stronger than ever. The Wyvernmoon council obviously wasn’t letting a little thing like losing a king affect their long-term goals.
He started to apologize to Phoebe for not being able to come up with a solution, or facts that either supported or debunked her opinion, but, judging by her expression, she wasn’t looking for a response, just someone to bounce ideas off of.
Not that he was surprised. He’d heard her express the same sentiment a million times in the few months she’d been with his clan, and she was right. That didn’t make the devastation wrought by the disease any easier to swallow.
Unable to bear a reexamination of the fucked-up state they were in, he concentrated instead on cleaning up the patient. He could do that if he thought of the man lying there as only a patient. Or at least, that’s what he told himself.
The bleed-out had been quick and ugly, death coming even faster than usual. Quinn tried to tell himself that a death this fast—only eighteen hours from the onset of t
he symptoms—was a blessing, but he didn’t really believe it. How could he when he’d seen Michael scream in agony and had been unable to do anything? Though Quinn was trying his best to compartmentalize, the wall he’d built around his emotions crumbled, leaving him feeling raw and exposed.
“I’ll do it, Quinn.” Phoebe’s hand stroked his back gently, cutting off his self-destructive thoughts, while she removed the blood-soaked rag from his hand. She rinsed it in the basin of warm water on the table next to the bed, then reached forward to stroke the rag over his younger brother’s still and bloody face.
His fingers curled into his fists, his talons poking through his fingertips and scoring his palm. He wanted to argue with her, to tell her that Michael was his responsibility and no one else’s. But the beast was too close, and if he opened his mouth right now, he was certain that only a growl would come out. He wanted to lash out at something, at someone, and Phoebe was a convenient target.
As the scent of fresh blood—Michael’s blood—permeated the room, Dylan stepped between the two of them. His gaze was steady but rife with warning, and it was clear he was no longer content to observe silently. “You don’t have to be here. Not for this.”
Again, Quinn didn’t answer, and Dylan didn’t push him—though his king had every right to expect an answer. They’d been friends since childhood, long before either had suspected that Dylan, a second son, would have to take up the reins of ruling their clan. But friendship—even four centuries of it—got them only so far. Especially when the king’s mate was involved and the threat against her was coming from one of Dylan’s sentries, who was sworn to protect her.