The Dragon of New Orleans

by Genevieve Jack

  A pair of polished black alligator loafers stepped into her field of vision. Expensive gray slacks draped over the tops. Whoever he was, he had good fashion sense. She had the fleeting thought that she should warn him about the blood. Don’t ruin your shoes.

  “Fuck!” a deep voice said from above.

  She was too weak to turn her head to see his face. Two hands slid beneath her body and lifted her. A sharp pain; something in her neck cracked; and then everything went black.

  Chapter Five

  Why the fuck had his magic failed him? Gabriel held Raven tightly against his chest, anger throbbing in his temples. Her bloody body felt tiny in his arms, frail, like he could crush her if he wasn’t careful. How the hell could this have happened?

  He’d felt her readiness today like a tug on his bones. She was healthy and strong, ready to serve him. But no matter how hard he’d focused on that deep sense of urgency that tied him to her, he could not zero in on her location. That had never happened before. In the past, he’d followed the bond like Ariadne’s thread straight to his ward. Even now, he sensed Richard in his home in the Garden District and Agnes in her apartment across the Quarter. By the energy coursing down the bond, both were happy and safe. But the woman in his arms—she’d been impossible to detect.

  Until her fear beckoned him. Then it had been as if she were screaming down the bond. Thank the Mountain he’d reached her before those men had raped her or worse. Unfortunately, the delay had cost her a nasty bump on the head. Unacceptable.

  It was the curse. The damn thing had scrambled his circuitry. Dragon magic was a tricky thing to wield in this realm under normal circumstances. Disrupt it with voodoo and he couldn’t trust it anymore. Not consistently.

  He landed on the balcony of his apartment, thankful that his invisibility still seemed to be effective. It was late, and he’d taken care to fly over areas of the French Quarter less populated than others at that hour. He tucked his wings away and used his foot to slide open the door.

  Safely inside, he laid her on his bed to inspect the damage. His breath seized in his lungs. She was tiny, waifish, her body still holding an echo of the illness he’d saved her from. Regardless, she was as lovely and pale as priceless porcelain, the fragile bones of her face supporting luminescent skin. Her hair was longer now, down to her chin, and wavy. He thought she looked like a goddess lying there, bleeding in his bed.

  Bleeding. By the Mountain, what was he doing? He ran to his dresser and retrieved his healing amulet, its lustrous white giving off rainbow hues like mother-of-pearl as he looped it around her neck. When he’d first come to this realm, a renowned indigenous healer had helped him and three of his siblings settle in the New World. She was a wise woman named Maiara, and Gabriel had grown to trust her implicitly. That was long ago, in another time and place. He thought of her now as the amulet that once was hers glowed in the dim light, and the edges of Ravenna’s wounds began to stitch together. Three hundred years and the amulet still worked. He frowned at the black heart of his traitorous ring.

  Retreating to the kitchen, he threw open the cupboards, one after another. Maiara always used a silver bowl for healing. It had to be silver. She said it staved off infection. Nothing silver resided in his cabinets, but he owned an antique store for Mountain’s sake. Think, Gabriel. Silver.

  An idea came to him, and he rushed into his living room, snatching a fresh flower arrangement off the coffee table and dumping its contents in the kitchen sink. He’d remembered the container the blooms were arranged in was an antique Spanish silver ember bowl. He washed it out quickly and filled it with warm water. The next instant he was by her side, using a fluffy white washcloth to clean her wound. He took care to remove as much of the blood as possible. It was best if she never knew how hurt she’d been.

  He suspected that her injuries might have killed her if it weren’t for his tooth. Curing her cancer was only the start. She’d heal faster with it inside her, and any skills she’d had before his gift would be enhanced by its presence. He was counting on that.

  Hand resting on her stomach, he turned her head to get at the blood that had dripped through her hair toward her ear. She moaned.

  “Hot,” she mumbled. Her eyes were still closed and her voice was groggy.

  Of course she was hot. She was wearing a fleece, and Gabriel’s natural body temperature kept things toasty in his immediate vicinity. Tucking the amulet inside her shirt, he cradled her head and carefully removed her outer layer.

  “Is that better?” he asked.

  Her eyelashes fluttered. He wrung out the rag again, mopping her forehead with cold water. Everything stopped when she opened her eyes. Sapphire blue. Intense. They cut right to his soul. All he could do was stare dumbly. Her picture had intrigued him, but a two-dimensional likeness couldn’t do her justice. And although he’d seen her in the hospital, her eyes had been rheumy then, clouded with pain, their natural luster dimmed. This was so much more. She was as enchanting as a jewel in the light whose facets begged to be examined, a sleeping beauty woken with a kiss.

  “It’s you,” she said, her lips parting in amazement. She raised her hand, letting it hover near his face like she meant to touch him but couldn’t bring herself to do so. “You saved me… again.”

  What was wrong with him? He could feel his inner dragon coil within his torso, wanting desperately to be stroked by those fingers. Her voice spoke directly to the deepest part of him. Unsettling to say the least. As a dragon, he wasn’t normally attracted to humans. He tended to find them too vulnerable. Which made him suspect his reaction to her was more about the curse than reality.

  “Of course I saved you,” he said, reining in the odd sensation. “Only an idiot wouldn’t protect his investment.”

  “Your investment?” Raven wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep, but she’d woken to heat burning in her torso, starting at the base of her ribs and blossoming north until it made her flushed and sweaty. Had she lost too much blood? Hit her head too hard? When she’d opened her eyes, he’d been there. Him. Death, dark eyes smoldering with that weird internal fire.

  The look in his eyes had been tender. Almost adoring. At first she thought he might kiss her, his face was so close to hers. She’d raised her hand to cradle his cheek but paused when she sensed something like a ripple travel first through him and then through her. She had the fleeting thought that she’d been electrocuted, only she had no personal experience with that. She’d read that when someone was struck by lightning, the energy entered at one point and traveled all the way through their body to exit out another. That’s how this felt, like heat had rolled through him and passed to her at the place he touched her stomach. It connected them still.

  But then he’d pulled away so abruptly, she might as well have been doused in ice water. He’d called her his “investment.” What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  “Breathe, Raven. I haven’t saved you twice now to have you suffocate yourself.”

  Yes, she was holding her breath, her body trying to reconnect with that energy it had experienced only a moment ago. But it was gone. She filled her lungs and let the air out slowly.

  He smelled of fire and spice, orange peels and burning leaves. The man was massive, his size intimidating enough for her to reflexively fist the sheets. She was lying on a nest of red silk on the right side of a mahogany four-poster that belonged in a European castle. Its size dwarfed her, making her feel tiny and insignificant. If she sank any deeper into the mattress, it might swallow her up. He might swallow her up.

  “You’re okay. Those men didn’t succeed in violating you.” His voice was a low rumble reminiscent of thunder.

  She ran a hand down the front of her body, thankful to find her T-shirt, bra, and jeans were all in place. So he’d stopped them in time.

  He turned to wring out a cloth he held and then mopped her head with it before returning it to a silver bowl on the bedside table. She touched the cool spot he left behind on her forehead. T
he idea of him caring for her made her heart flutter. His eyes raked over her possessively, rendering her as good as naked despite all her clothing.

  “Did you kill them?” She trembled at the memory of the man bleeding in the street.

  “No,” he said. “Although I should have. It brings me no joy that they will wake up tomorrow, even if they do so in a hospital.”

  A dark cloud passed behind his eyes, and for the first time she felt afraid. He was real. A man who could bring death as easily as he could bring life. She shuddered.

  He leaned back to put additional room between them. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “I wouldn’t have healed you if I planned to hurt you. Those men deserved what they got. It is in my nature to be protective of what is mine.”

  Mine. What? She swallowed twice. “Are you Death?”

  He snorted, then laughed, the sound reverberating from deep within his chest and filling the room. He ran a hand through his longish dark waves and then shook his head as if he found the idea entirely preposterous.

  “Of course not,” he said. “My name is Gabriel Blakemore, proprietor of Blakemore’s Antiques, the shop below us.”

  She wrinkled her forehead, an expression that hurt more than it should have.

  “Careful. You’re still healing. I hastened the process, but your body has to do the work. Give it a few minutes.” His voice was thick and deep, with the hint of an accent she couldn’t quite place. Not Louisianan or even Southern. She hadn’t noticed before. Now she wondered if he was originally from somewhere else.

  She rubbed her head. It was throbbing. She could barely think.

  “Hmm. Sorry about that. You will heal faster with my tooth inside you, but I was worried about your head, so I used this.” He lifted a disk from her chest that shone with the luster of mother-of-pearl. He set it on the table beside the bowl. Instantly her head stopped aching. “I’ve left it on too long.”

  “Better,” she said.

  “Good. Rest for a moment. Then I will take you home. You’re safe now.” He placed a hand on her upper arm.

  Raven’s stomach did an odd little roll at his touch and then, just as strangely, everything inside her calmed. She met his gaze again and was not afraid. A sense of peace and safety wrapped around her like a cloak.

  He cleared his throat and removed his hand, retreating to a chair beside the bed and leaving her arm cold from the lack of his touch. The Louis XIV piece looked like children’s furniture beneath his oversized body, but he folded into it with the grace of a dancer, smoothing his shirt. He was impeccably dressed. Raven wasn’t into fashion, but anyone would appreciate the man’s threads.

  “How did you cure my cancer? What did you give me?” she asked. “Was it an experimental drug? Something illegal?”

  “Ms. Tanglewood, I fed you my tooth. I’ll thank you not to make light of it. I only have so many, and it takes years for them to grow back.” He rubbed his jaw as he spoke, as if the extraction still stung.

  She blinked at him, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “If teeth cured cancer, we’d all be saving our baby teeth instead of buying health insurance.” Was she really arguing the impossibility of magic healing teeth?

  “Human teeth cannot cure cancer.” His long, tapered fingers tapped compulsively against his thigh. Odd. She was still staring at those dancing fingers when the gist of what he said sank in.

  “Did you just say you weren’t… human?”

  He leaned back and looked at her through long, dark lashes. “I would have thought that would be obvious by now.”

  She rubbed her head again, feeling a little sick. She’d lived in New Orleans for years, since the day her parents had taken over the Three Sisters from her grandparents when she was nine. Rumors of the supernatural abounded in the city’s history, in the air she breathed, in the voodoo shops that lined the Quarter.

  She should be afraid. Any normal woman would be. She should leap out of this bed and huddle against the wall or race for the exit. Whether from exhaustion or because after everything, she couldn’t bring herself to muster a fear of him, she stayed where she was and simply asked, “Are you a… vampire?”

  His eyes widened, and he broke into deep, rumbling laughter. “No. I’m not.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “I, Ms. Tanglewood, am a dragon.” He inclined his head formally.

  “A dragon.” She stared at him, waiting for an explanation.

  “A dragon. You and I made a deal. I cured you with my tooth and you agreed to work for me in exchange. I presume I gave you enough time to recover. It appears you are entirely whole again. Are you prepared to fulfill your debt to me?”

  “You want me to… work for you?”

  He raised an eyebrow in her direction. “Of course. You agreed—”

  “I remember,” she said. “I just… I didn’t think you were real. I haven’t heard from you in months.”

  He scoffed. “I assume my existence is no longer suspect. I gave you space to heal. That is all. Now I need you to uphold your end of the bargain.”

  “What do you want me to do?” She braced herself. She still wasn’t sure what he meant by being a dragon. Would he want to drink her blood? Make her his sex slave? Or something worse?

  “Do you see this ring?” He thrust the massive emerald he wore closer to her face. It was a large rectangle set in a thick band of gold, crafted with scrollwork along the sides of the center stone. The size of the stone filled the space between the base of his finger and his second knuckle.

  “You could see that thing from space,” she murmured.

  The corner of his mouth twitched and then he seemed to remember himself, becoming serious once again. “At the center of this stone, you will notice a flaw.” He moved the ring closer, almost to her nose. There was a flaw, a narrow black cat’s-eye at the center of the gem. The facets hid it at a distance, but close up, it was unmistakable.

  “I see it,” she said.

  “I need your help fixing it.”

  She slowly sat up, inhaling deeply. “I don’t know anything about jewelry.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “Then how do you expect me to fix it?”

  He rose and paced away from her, toward the end of the bed where a fireplace lay cold and unused. His fingers tapped vigorously against his thigh, and the former grace and gentleness she’d seen in him melted away. In its place was an agitation that was almost palpable.

  “This is a very special gem, an important gem. The magic imbued in this ring allows someone like me, a dragon like me, to remain in this realm. Without it, I will be forced to return to my homeland or I will perish. I don’t wish for either of those things to happen.”

  Raven tried to digest what he was telling her. “What’s wrong with your ring?”

  He gave a frustrated sigh. “It’s been cursed. The magic is failing. I need you to use your abilities to help me find the cure, the countercurse.”

  “You want me to cure your ring?” She formed each word slowly, deliberately. It didn’t make any sense.

  “Exactly.” His tapping fingers curled into a fist. He looked somehow relieved, as if now she understood what she needed to do. As if curing rings was something former cancer patients did all the time.

  She shook her head and tried to still the tremble in her hand. “There’s been a terrible mistake. I don’t know how to fix your ring. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  With a deep sigh he approached her again. “Of course not. I haven’t given you the resources to do so yet. But I will, once you begin. I’ll give you everything you need.” He shifted restlessly, like his entire body itched.

  “Okay,” she said softly. She didn’t understand. Not by a long shot. But she’d try. She owed him that.

  “Now, if you are well, my driver is waiting to take you home. I expect you back here by seven thirty tomorrow morning. Do not be late. Do you understand?” His voice had changed, and she winced at the harshn
ess.

  “Tomorrow is Sunday. You mean Monday morning.”

  “Tomorrow, Ms. Tanglewood. I expect you to start tomorrow. Is that understood?” His eyes had gone hard and as cold as ice, and his jaw tightened. He was twice her size. A human man that large could snap her like a twig. Gabriel had made it clear he wasn’t human. He’d said he was a dragon. Would he burn her with fiery breath if she didn’t obey? Stop her heart with the same magic with which he had resurrected her body? She didn’t want to find out.

  “All right.” She didn’t know what else to say. It was all too much, too crazy. All she wanted to do was wake up from this surreal dream she was in. She needed room to think.

  He helped her up and handed her fleece to her. For a moment she was pinned by his undivided attention. The intensity slammed into her like she was a flower newly sprouted from the earth and looking directly into the sun.

  Enthralled, she allowed him to guide her from the apartment into a short hallway and down a flight of stairs with a glossy, dark wood railing that belonged in another time. She oriented herself as they descended. His home was on the third floor. The second level was dark, closed up for the night, she presumed. When they reached the first floor, there was no doubt they were inside an antique shop. Every manner of Old World décor was displayed in the space, which was large by French Quarter standards. As they navigated the uneven aisle toward the front door, she tried not to gape at an ornate armoire’s $40,000 price tag. She took a step away from it.

  It surprised her how gracefully Gabriel steered his oversized frame through the valuable and delicate pieces in the room. Only when he opened the door for her did she realize where they were: Royal Street. She glanced up at the sign, Blakemore’s Antique Shop.

  A town car pulled up beside her, and Gabriel opened the door. “Will you need a ride in the morning?”