“Stay close behind me--but not too close,” Damien growled.
Before she could demand to know how she was supposed to follow such a command, assuming she wanted to, a patch of red, scaly hide popped through the smooth flesh that covered his back. Rippling and moving like a live thing, it consumed him, replacing the flesh of his entire body--all that she could see of it--within moments. Along his spine, sharp, pointed ridges of bone protruded almost like jagged teeth. From his shoulder blades emerged dark, leathery extrusions which expanded and lengthened before they unfurled, looking like nothing so much as the wings of a giant bat.
She came as close to fainting as she ever had in her life when he turned his head to give her a warning glance. The face of manly beauty that had captivated her attention had vanished. In its place was the head of a demon creature.
She was still rooted to the ground in horror when he arched his neck and spit a wall of flame at the three ‘challengers’ who faced him. Gripped in the trance-like state of shock, her gaze followed the leaping, curling wall of flame even while her brain screamed at her not to look, envisioning scorched flesh melting from bones as the flames licked it. A jolt went through her as she saw the other ‘men.’
They weren’t men at all, but rather half man half beast--much like the man who called himself Damien Bloodragon, except that Damien was no longer a man at all. All vestiges of man had vanished from him she realized when he charged forward to attack the man-beasts.
She wasn’t certain how long she remained rooted to the same spot, watching the deadly dance of the four men in horror as they slashed and bit at each other with razor sharp claws and teeth, belching fire and smoke, but it could not be said that her brain finally kicked in and began to work once more. Like a scratched phonograph record, a few words filtered through her mind and, sluggishly, her mind began to decipher the meanings. In the end, however, it was more the primal urge of survival that moved her almost mechanically across the dunes. ‘Tunnel--home’ kept repeating through her mind over and over, as if the phonograph needle had stuck in one spot.
It was a desert landscape. There was little enough to serve as landmarks and the men-beasts had torn up the sand in their deadly battle--she refused to think of the implications of Damien Bloodragon’s remark about her being ‘in season’ only moments before the others had appeared, but escape was uppermost in her mind as she began to make her way slowly around the battle in search of the spot where she’d landed when she’d emerged from the strange tunnel.
She had not traversed half the distance between the spot where Damien had left her and the spot she decided must have been her entrance into this bizarre world, when one of the creatures landed solidly in front of her. The stench of scorched flesh hit her like a slap in the face, effectively lifting her from much of the shock that had numbed her. Almost like a sleepwalker awakening in a place far removed from where they had laid their head to sleep, she blinked, her mind opening to a blast of perceptions at once.
Blood seeped from dozens of wounds on his body--the body of some creature not humanoid, but rather reptilian. Scales covered parts of his body, like armor, but so too, did more human-like flesh, though much of that was burned. His head was grotesquely deformed, not quite human, and not quite reptilian, but somewhere between the two.
As he took a step toward her and Khalia’s whole body tensed for flight, she was gripped suddenly by a clawed hand that encircled her entire waist. Her head whipped instinctively toward the newest threat.
The dragon who held her leaned toward her until they were almost nose to nose. “I told you to stay back,” he muttered in a rumbling, growling hiss.
Before Khalia could do more than gape at him, he set her behind him and gave her a push to urge her out of the way as he met the beast that had threatened her. In all fairness, she supposed he believed it a ‘gentle’ push. The fact of the matter was, however, that he was far stronger than a human. She flew backward several feet before she hit the ground and rolled down a dune. Still stunned, she rolled to her knees within moments of coming to a halt and began scrambling toward her goal once more, more desperately than before.
As mind boggling as the entire incident was, as difficult as it was to register all that had been happening, she’d still noted the two bodies lying in the sand, dying or dead already. Damien and the remaining man beast were locked in battle now. One would win. She was fairly certain she wanted nothing to do with whoever won and she was running out of time and options.
Closing her mind to the growls, roars and meaty thuds as they pounded at each other, she searched frantically along the dune for the tunnel she had never actually seen. She had felt it though and she reasoned that she should be able to feel it again if she found it.
She came up empty. Glancing around a little desperately to get her bearings, she noticed two things almost simultaneously. The creature that Damien had become had vanquished his foe … and she was standing, as nearly as she could tell, where she’d landed when she’d found herself in the desert. As the great beast rose and looked around for her, she stumbled to her feet, gathered herself and, clutching the amulet as she had before, she dove.
She felt certain she plowed up three feet of sand when she touched down like an airplane coming in for a landing--minus landing gear. The air being pounded from her lungs on impact was all that kept the cloud of dust she dug up from saturating her throat and lungs. Even so, she was coughing when an arm snaked around her waist and jerked her to her feet.
“You cannot return to the other world.”
“I wasn’t trying to,” Khalia lied when she managed to catch her breath, batting the sand from her eyes with her lashes and finally peering up at him.
He was--he looked--human once more, but she knew better now and she didn’t feel any less threatened.
One dark brow arched skeptically, but he said nothing for several moments, lifting his head to scan the skies above them. “I should have realized at once that you were in season and the danger far worse than I’d anticipated.”
Despite her fear of the creature, Khalia felt indignation rise once more. “That is a vile, disgusting thing to say! If I wasn’t a lady, I’d slap your face!”
He looked at her, his eyes narrowing, but in a moment the corners of his mouth twitched, a smile threatening. He curbed the urge when she glared at him, though his eyes still gleamed with amusement and something else she rather preferred not to interpret. “Your pardon, princess. It was merely a statement of fact and not intended to insult you.”
His audacity bereft her of speech for perhaps two heartbeats. “It is NOT a fact,” she snapped. “I am a woman … human. We do not go into he--We do not come in sea--”
Both dark brows lifted that time. Instead of releasing her, however, he moved his hands to her upper arms. Grasping them firmly, he hauled her closer, dipping his head until they were almost nose to nose. It wasn’t until that moment that Khalia realized that he wasn’t gasping from exertion so much as the effort to control his urges. His eyes were dark with hunger and as he dragged in a deep breath, his features hardened. A tremor traveled through the hands that gripped her.
As before, and despite all logic to the contrary, her body instantly responded to the desire she sensed in him. It moved over and through her like a wave of electricity, making her skin prickle with hypersensitivity. Abruptly, she was aware of her own body in a way she never had been before and him as she had never been aware of another man. The heat of his body, his scent, his sheer male magnificence rolled over her, annihilating the last shreds of her common sense.
“Your scent is as delicate as a lotan blossom and as fiery as acid in my blood. If I were not disciplined to ignore my primal urges because of my position in caring for the royal family, I would have taken you myself. Not one male within a twenty mile radius can resist your allure at this moment. I must take you some place safe until your time has passed … or you will have no choice in your mate, for the strongest will take you.”
>
He might have been speaking gibberish for all Khalia understood. His husky voice slid along her nerve endings like the caress of a hand, sending warming, pleasurable, knee weakening vibrations throughout her body. She sighed, unconsciously lifting her lips a little closer in silent supplication.
She wasn’t certain when he ceased speaking and his gaze focused on her mouth, but the rush of his breath, as if a giant hand had suddenly squeezed the air from his lungs, escalated want to need and she leaned infinitesimally closer.
“Olgin’s balls!” he growled, setting her away from him abruptly. “You tempt me to your peril, princess. I am a soldier first. But I am still a man.”
Khalia blinked in surprise, but it was several moments before the obvious crudity/curse filtered through her heated brain and several more before the implications of his last comment made a connection. She gaped at him in outrage then, revolted by the very notion that she was so lost to all sense of propriety as to encourage any man, let alone a … savage to think that she was eager for his lovemaking, making no attempt to hide either her outrage or her revulsion. “I tempt … I!” she stammered. “Your … primal urges have fried your brain, you … you … whatever sort of creature you are!”
His features hardened with anger. He caught her wrists this time, slowly and deliberately forcing them behind her back until she was forced to arch her back to relieve the pressure. Manacling both her wrists with one hand, he just as deliberately flicked the tatters of her jacket aside and cupped one of her breasts, pinching the erect bud at the end. Something very like a jolt of electricity went through her, but she wasn’t certain, at first, if it was purely from shock at his familiarity or something else entirely. When he lowered his head and replaced his fingers with his mouth, lathing the sensitive tip with his tongue and then covering it with his mouth and suckling, she lost all awareness of anything beyond the mindless pleasure that enveloped her, weakening her knees, constricting the air in her lungs until she found herself struggling to breathe.
“I am dragon … just as you are, princess,” he growled when he lifted his head at last.
Khalia struggled to lift her eyelids and focus on what he was saying. “I am no such thing. My parents were human beings … not … not.”
“Dragons?” he supplied, his eyes narrowed now, his breath as ragged as her own. “Your sire was human. Your mother, Princess Rheaia, was as I am--Dragon. But do not despair, sheashona. I will not hold it against you that you are only a half breed.”
Chapter Three
Khalia strongly suspected that Damien had transformed himself into a dragon merely for the purpose of intimidating her. If he had needed only the ability of flight, she had seen that he could achieve that merely by producing wings at will, so she could only consider his shift from man to fearsome beast as premeditated and for that purpose alone.
It had worked, but she was not so spineless as to allow him to know. In any case, he had grabbed her up and taken flight without so much as a ‘by your leave’ and it had taken her quite some time to adapt to the sensation.
She had witnessed the acrobatics of a biplane on several occasions--it was 1920 after all and everyone seemed convinced by now that airplanes were the future of transport--but she had certainly not been foolhardy enough to climb into one--if man had been intended to fly, he would have been born with wings--and had never anticipated the possibility, or desire, of doing so. To find herself suddenly whisked into the sky had been a traumatizing experience, and she wasn’t altogether certain but what the long term effects upon a person’s health would prove to be detrimental. She was convinced that the heart palpitations it had caused her already could not be considered a good thing.
Fortunately, they had not been airborne long before, in the distance, she noticed what at first appeared to be a jutting of rock on the very edge of the desert. Damien, she realized was flying directly toward it, for within moments they drew close enough that she could make out the regular angles and twisted spires that denoted a manmade--dragonmade? --non-naturally occurring formation. Before they had gotten close enough for Khalia to make out much in the way of details, however, a dozen or so ‘dots’ rose from it, like a swarm of angry bees, and headed directly toward them.
Remembering the dragon men Damien had had to fight off of her, Khalia was instantly terrorized and it was only by sheer willpower that she managed to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of what appeared to be almost certain death. Not for a moment did she believe these beasts could sense anything except, possibly, that she was a female, but it seemed a moot point when they were convinced that she was ripe for mating.
She had always prided herself on her imagination. Next to her intelligence, she had thought it a most profound gift, for it allowed her to view the bits and pieces of ancient civilizations that arrived at the museum and visualize the civilization that had created them.
Unfortunately, at the moment, it also allowed her to visualize an aerial battle between a dozen and one primal creatures bent on being first to mate with the female Damien had discovered…. And her lifeless body splattered on the ground below while they continued to slug it out, unaware that they’d ‘broken’ the prize they were all fighting over.
For the first time in her life she perfectly understood the look of abject terror on the face of female dogs she’d seen racing before a pact of determined males.
“Mercy!” she exclaimed when she managed to collect enough spit in her mouth to unglue her tongue from the roof.
She was glad she had refrained from screaming in horror. She’d no sooner uttered the single word when an insect struck the corner of her mouth with the velocity of a shotgun pellet, proof positive that self-restraint was its own reward.
“It is the royal guard,” Damien growled at her in that deep, gravelly voice that emerged from his dragon’s chest.
“Oh?” she managed, pardonably pleased with herself that the single word seemed almost regally aloof, rather than doubtful, or even relieved.
“Let us hope that they are as disciplined as I had thought.”
“No! Don’t spare me the bad news. I can take it,” Khalia said dryly.
He made a sound that might have been a chuckle, or a snort, she wasn’t certain which, but the attempt at humor didn’t particularly lighten her own mood.
The group of dragon men stopped well before they reached Damien and Khalia, hovering, it seemed to Khalia, indecisively, their great wings stirring the hot air from the desert below. Not so much as a single word passed between them and Khalia was surprised when the soldiers abruptly saluted in the same manner that Damien had saluted her and then fell in around and behind them. She glanced at Damien curiously. As if he sensed her gaze, he tilted his head.
It was uncanny, really, that the eyes watching her from that massive dragon head were so exactly the same as Damien’s eyes. They were even the strange, almost purple color of Damien’s eyes. One would have thought the man would disappear completely once the beast had taken over.
“You have no understanding of dragon folk.”
It was not a question, rhetorical or otherwise, but there was censure in the comment, Khalia felt certain. She might have ignored the remark except that he’d already spoken insultingly of her being a half breed. She responded to the disapproval therefore even though it irritated her that she felt provoked. Why should she care what his opinion of her was anyway? She was an exceptionally well educated woman. She’d not only graduated from high school, she’d graduated from a women’s college, as well. “You’ll have to forgive my ignorance. They didn’t teach it in my school.”
He merely grunted, which was almost as annoying as the remark had been to begin with. She would’ve felt better if she’d seen some sign that her sarcasm was at least as irritating to him as his bigotry was to her.
“Princess Rheaia should have seen to it that you were better prepared.”
Khalia sent him a cold look. “If my mother was Princess Rheaia, as you seem to believe, th
en she could hardly be faulted for not preparing me since she died at my birth,” Khalia lied without remorse. She didn’t for a moment believe her mother had been this Princess Rheaia that he kept referring to, and she knew very well that her mother had not died in child bed--she had, for reasons Khalia had never been privy to, given Khalia up for adoption--but she wasn’t about to let some complete stranger insult her mother!
The dragon Damien frowned, but it was far more thoughtful than annoyed. “Your pardon. You may rest assured, however, that she would never have given you up unless she feared for your safety, sheashona.”
Khalia sent him a startled glance and then frowned, wondering if she’d mentioned that she’d grown up in an orphanage, but she could not believe that she had. She’d never told anyone. Had she, somehow, given herself away?
Before she could decide how to respond to the remark, Damien settled on the ramparts of the castle and released her. Around them, the other man-beasts landed, shifting into perfectly ordinary looking men.
Upon consideration, Khalia mentally revived the assessment. They looked like perfectly extraordinary men, well built, handsome--and as bizarrely garbed as her captor, Damien. Nevertheless, she would never have believed that they were other than men if she had not seen them shift from beast to man.
To her discomfort, they knelt and saluted as Damien had. She was still wondering what to say, or if there was something she should say, when Damien grasped her arm and led her from the ramparts and into the fortress.
Although more ancient civilizations were her forte`, her position in the museum, if not her extensive education, had made her somewhat familiar with the medieval period of Europe. She was conversant enough in any case that she immediately noticed that the fortress bore little resemblance to any castle she’d ever studied. It was definitely not new, but neither ancient, nor primitive. The exterior appeared to be constructed entirely of some sort of stone that bore a strong resemblance to slate. She had no idea what the probability might be of stone from her own world occurring naturally on another, but the properties of slate, which was that it was highly resistant to fire, seemed to indicate a strong probability that it had at least that much in common with slate. As they approached the massive door that opened off of the ramparts, it swung open without a sound, belching a gust of chilled air.
Tears of the Dragon Page 2