by Неизвестный
A spike of anger coursed through her. She picked up a pillow and threw it at his head. “Why bother keeping them calm, Karon? Why not just tie them up wide awake so I can hear them scream for their mothers at night?” Her hands balled into fists in frustration. She wanted Karon to see the evil, to understand what he was doing, instead of calmly handing sleeping children over to a monster.
“Because regardless of what you might think, Gracie, I’m not a bad guy.”
* * * *
Karon opened the sliding door and stood out on the Dendric One’s deck. The cold night air bit at his skin. He found a spot where Grathers’ voice came through the clearest and pulled his coat tight around his shoulders.
“You missed the drop off, Captain Karon. The helicopter came back empty.” Anger tinged Grathers’ high-pitched whine.
“I needed to make sure they were stable before transporting them off the boat. Doc says the capture was hard on their systems…something about the side effects of that pixie dust concoction we used to trap them.” Karon scraped his nails across his scalp at the memory of their little shivering limbs as they fought hypothermia.
“As you can imagine, I have had little time to fully test that substance. Dendric will probably start clinical trials for human use next year. I would appreciate it if you kept the mere’s side effects off your report.”
Karon nodded to himself, used to Pierson Grathers’ methods.
“I must say, Karon, I expected more from you.” If the scientist’s voice weren’t so squeaky, Karon would have called his statement a threat. “When should we arrange for the next pick up?”
Karon hesitated, thinking of a way to buy some time. “I think we should hold off till I can bring in more subjects. No use wasting gas and transport time unless you’ve got enough bodies to make it worth your while.”
The scientist paused. “Are you certain there isn’t some other reason for your reluctance?” The connection crackled ominously.
“I only have the best interests of your work in mind, sir.” Karon waited for the delay in transmission. Satellite phones made even direct conversation difficult.
“Have you felt any changes from your treatments?”
Karon’s heart thumped hard in response, not in fear but in hunger, anger. The doctor might be the beast’s creator, but he was also its enemy. “No, unfortunately not.” His fangs had distended, making speech difficult, but the bad connection hid his lisp.
The doctor’s next words were crisp. “I’d like to take some samples from you after this collection—”
The connection died before Karon heard the end of the doctor’s statement. He switched channels on his cell phone to one that wouldn’t pick up any more of Pierson’s calls.
* * * *
Kai waited with pride for his soldiers to arrive on shore. The early dawn chill bit at his skin, but he barely felt the cold. A small ferry had just left the harbor, carrying mere to jobs in human areas and on other parts of the island. He activated his cell phone and gazed at an image of Alara’s sleeping face. The photo would be his only memento of their time together, but he would cherish it always. Her trepidation about forming an attachment was wise. He was already attached, and would miss her very much when he returned to the Underwater City. However, the image of her happy and grateful when his men found the kidnapped children would forever soothe the hurt. He couldn’t be her mate, but he would be her hero.
His human body, which had felt so awkward and wrong at the start of the trip, tingled at the memory of her skin against him. Her flesh was so very pale, far more white than pink, with tiny blue and green veins clearly visible under the surface. Her hair was a curtain of white gold. He closed his eyes and allowed the scent of her to waft up from his clothes. His resolve to keep out of her arms weakened with every breath, but he would not succumb to temptation. The idea of Alara aching for him after he left sobered his thoughts. The proud woman would not be made to cry, not for him.
Kai attempted to imagine his return to the Underwater City. He visualized his parents and colleagues, tried to imagine meeting the female his parents acquired for him. They’d attached a photo of her to this morning’s email. His promised mate was small for a dragoness, and extremely young. He wished the image had captured his imagination, or even held his attention. Instead, his thumb brushed across his phone to re-activate the screen with Alara’s sleep-softened face.
A whooshing splash carried over the waves, and Kai knew his troops would arrive in minutes. A twinge of concern knotted his stomach. In all the talking, fighting, and eventual kissing the previous night, he’d failed to inform Alara about the troops the Council was sending. At the time he’d thought he wanted to surprise her. Now the reality of Alara’s possible reactions crashed into his imagination.
One after another, the twenty-five black, gray, brown and white dragons pulled slowly up onto the beach. Their bulk filled the narrow shoreline. Their limbs ground to a halt a few moments later, and Kai smiled, remembering the shock to his metabolism when he’d first arrived.
“Welcome to Murrough Island, soldiers. You’ll have to shift to human for the duration of your time on land.”
A chorus of low rumbling growls met his words, and Kai felt his lip twitch. “You’ll find clothing in the changing area over there.” He pointed to the small cabin.
Once his men returned fully clothed, Kai filled them in on the problem at hand. Kai knew the team’s leader from his previous assignment on a mere habitat. Laird was native to this region. Tall as any dragon, his skin and hair shone as pale as a mere’s. Though he’d never asked, Kai always assumed the broad soldier was albino. Now he wondered if maybe interbreeding played a role.
“We are at your disposal, General Kai.” Laird’s stiff features didn’t change with his words, but Kai sensed the dragon’s goodwill.
“Good, we’ll go now to the area’s government headquarters. I’ve asked the staff to make sleeping arrangements. You will have to sleep three or four to a room, but you should be comfortable enough.”
He noticed some of the men shuffle uncomfortably. “Yes?”
Laird spoke for the group. “I believe the men are wondering why we don’t stay in the dragons-only area of this habitat.” Kai caught Laird’s sigh, as if the pale dragon knew his troops’ thoughts but didn’t necessarily agree.
“This habitat lacks a dragon district. They have lived under self-rule for fifty years. If such a district existed at one point, it is now buried under a large drift of snow.” His lip pinched in frustration at the soldiers’ prejudice.
A man in the back shouted out. “So we are to share living space with mere?”
The last word held such an edge of disgust that Kai reached for him and gripped the male’s human-form face in his hand. “You will not speak of our hosts in that manner.” He dropped the young dragon and strode toward the Glass House, his troops in his wake.
* * * *
Alara waited in the conference room for an early meeting with Kai and her lieutenants. Despite the early morning light pouring through the large window, the atmosphere stank with tension. A little boy, this one only six years old, had disappeared an hour earlier. Schools were closed and parents had been warned to keep their children inside. The whole damn town was on lock down, and still another fucking kidnapping!
Erling looked up, dark circles marring his normally-gorgeous face. “This time the town won’t settle for simply getting the children back. They’re screaming for blood.”
Alara stared out the window, biting at the skin along the sides of her fingernails. “Yeah, but to administer punishment we need a culprit. Even if we find the kids, we won’t learn what happened if their memory’s been erased.”
Kaylee wiped the back of her hand under one of her bloodshot eyes. “Let’s just focus on finding them. We can vent our spleen after.”
Alara wondered when Kai would arrive. Each of her soldiers looked more exhausted than the next, some even looked more whooped than her. An extra
set of hands would come in handy, and Kai’s were so strong, and big…
A knock on the door jolted Alara away from her thoughts. Kai’s low voice spoke through the door, and she invited him in. Even with all the crap going on, the sight of him brought a smile to her face. Really. She seriously had to stop looking at him that way. He was probably way too sweet for a bitch like her anyway.
His eyes met hers in a flash of pure heat, and she hoped her men didn’t see her blush. She recovered composure after only a moment, but reddened for a completely different reason when several males filed in behind him. The door hung open, and she could make out another ten or so tall, black-haired heads on the other side of the door.
That idiotic asshole had brought a whole friggin’ dragon army. Her nostrils flared in anger, but she tried to control her frustration. After all, there were children at risk. That had to take precedence over old rivalries.
“Kai.” She twisted her face into a stern look meant to communicate how badly he’d screwed the pooch. “I see you’ve brought guests.”
His spine stiffened and his chin rose as he spoke. “Yes, Princess. The Council has offered its assistance in the matter of the kidnappings.”
“And how much assistance exactly are they ‘offering’?” She could tell he hadn’t registered her feelings. So her words this time were slower and more pointed.
Her cadence seemed to have gotten to him, because he blinked and met her eyes. “Twenty five soldiers.” He’d said it as a statement, but she could hear his desire to rise up in question at the end.
She looked to her lieutenants, all five of them watching the visitors with open suspicion. Then she took in the five human-form dragons who’d accompanied Kai into the meeting. Kai’s troops remained standing, all except for the blond one stared down at her troops with haughty gazes.
“General Kai, I would like a moment alone to discuss this new development.” She nodded toward a door that led from the conference room to a smaller office. Only when he closed the door behind them both did she let out her tightly held breath.
“What the fuck do you mean by this, Nasu?” Her teeth ground down to keep her voice low.
His eyes widened in surprise but then narrowed. His jaw set into a hard line. “I do not understand your anger. You asked for my help, and I am providing help.”
“I wanted your help with strategy and with patrols. I wanted your input. I didn’t ask you to bring a cohort of friggin’ dragons in.”
“You need additional manpower for the search. Plus, dragons are faster, stronger. We have more resources at our disposal. We can travel farther inland.” As he spoke, Kai’s voice rose and became more emphatic.
“You prejudiced jerk!” The image of him as he’d been when she first met him flashed in her mind—just as conceited and stiff as every soldier standing outside.
“I’m just stating facts, Princess!” he barked. The guy she’d been thinking was too nice actually snarled at her.
She turned away to go to the window. A light sprinkling of snow drifted through the sun’s rays. The sound of his feet shuffling against carpet signaled his approach. He stopped short of touching her, but she could feel his warmth against her back. When he spoke again his voice was soothing, reminding her of the man she only knew in the darkest hour of night.
“I want to help you, Alara. Please allow me to.”
His words cut her anger like a blade through silk. Here, with just the two of them, it didn’t feel like a play for power. She wanted to relax back into his chest, listen to his heartbeat.
“Okay.” She felt his excited flinch behind her. Her gaze stayed at the window. “But your troops are under my command. I want those reptiles to understand who’s in charge around here.
* * * *
Pierson Grathers’ plane landed in Longyearbyen. A snowmobile waited nearby to transport him to the zodiac, which would deliver him to the Dendric One. Despite the black overcoat dwarfing his frame, he shivered at the cold. John Karon would pay for forcing him to oversee subject collection this closely.
By the time he stood on deck, the sun hung low in the sky. The arctic air chilled him to the bone. What he wouldn’t give to be back in his cozy laboratory in Washington, DC. Karon led him up the narrow metal labyrinth to the bridge. From this lookout, Pierson saw for miles around, gray-blue water dotted with white icebergs and barren drifts of land covered in snow. That mere could survive in this wasteland gave testament to the adaptability of their species.
Turning abruptly away from the window, he pinned his attention on Karon.
“Do you know why I’m here?”
The other man squirmed and didn’t meet his glance. “No, Pierson, I have no idea.”
“We only have a few days to collect subjects. I was hoping for twenty at least, maybe as many as fifty. Instead you have how many below?”
“Seven.” Karon thrust his chin forward in a stubborn display.
“Do you have any idea how little I can prove with such a small sample size? I can’t isolate the gene that causes mere-ism with only seven subjects! A full inquiry would require at least a thousand.”
Karon cut in. “Didn’t you get samples from the Key Sirena mere?” The captain’s words sounded like a challenge.
“Not that you would understand, Captain Karon, but that group had so much interbreeding with the dragon population it made the findings un-interpretable. Perhaps if I had a larger sample of pure-bred mere from this area I could better suss out which mutations led to which shape-shifting ability. But seven subjects? There’s no way to identify a trend.”
Karon lowered his head, though the doctor couldn’t make out his expression. Pierson plowed forward. “Which is why you are going to head out there right now and catch me more mere.”
A satisfied smile formed as he watched Karon’s face grow defiant, then complacent. “All right. I’ll take the team right now. Would you like to come, see the process?”
Pierson refused to rise to Karon’s dare. No way would he leave the warmth of the ship to go dry-suit diving in below-freezing waters.
“No thank you, captain. I would like to start what work I can on the few subjects I have so far.”
Karon jerked at Pierson’s words, but the doctor just smiled. No captain liked losing control of his ship, but the latent vampire had invited this. Pierson watched as Karon started pulling tanks across the deck and sorting through dive equipment. “Oh, and, Captain, I’m going to need to run some tests on that succubus. I didn’t expect to still have access to her, but since she’s still available it would be a waste to not take advantage.”
The captain closed the door behind him a moment later, leaving Pierson to decipher why Karon’s hands shook.
* * * *
Alara’s head hung over the reports on her desk. Her men and the dragons had re-documented the site of every kidnapping, the paths each victim had taken to and from school each day. They’d interviewed all the parents, friends, teachers, classmates. They’d found nothing. At least today no more children had disappeared…yet.
A knock on the door pulled Alara out of her frantic reading. She called out for the visitor to enter and then groaned when her least favorite brother slumped into the seat in front of her. Florian was the oldest, eighty-four to her sixty-two. He looked little older than her in human years, early thirties to her mid-twenties. Their parents had borne children late in life, both of them almost two-hundred by the time Alara was born.
His hair held none of the gold hues of hers, instead it flowed around his shoulders in a grayish-white.
“Hello, Sister. I hope your investigation is going well.” He said it in a bored drawl that assured Alara he cared none for the victims or their families.
Alara didn’t have the energy to argue with him today. “It’s going as well as could be expected. Why are you here, Florian?”
He smiled that same smile he used when lying to their father. “I’d like to discuss with you the dragons’ involvement on the island.”
She could tell he was jerking her chain. “What is there to discuss? My men are doing the best they can. Kai offered to bring in more help. I accepted. End of story.” She motioned to the door, hoping the jerk would take the hint and leave.
“Aren’t you concerned about them just showing up, taking over your investigation? Your forces?”
The question sounded innocent, but it pinched Alara where she was most vulnerable. If part of her agreed with Florian, she would never let him know it. “I trust that General Nasu is only acting out of good will.”
Florian’s face squished into a sympathetic expression. “I understand why you may feel beholden to him, Sister. But you must admit that this is a drastic change in Murrough Island’s policies in a very short period of time.”
Alara grimaced at his hint about her and Kai’s relationship, but tried to focus on the second part of her brother’s statement. “There’s been no change in policy. We are just accepting assistance from a foreign government during a time of national emergency. Human nations do it all the time.”
Her brother sat back in his seat, raising his hands in agreement. “Perhaps you’re correct, Sister. Maybe they will just go on their merry way once they have found the missing girls. Maybe they won’t expect anything in return. But I find it hard to believe.”
Alara raised her chin. She may not trust the dragons, but she trusted Kai. “I’m sure they will expect more traction from us on trade agreements and whatnot, but that was likely to occur anyway. General Kai’s visit was meant to build bridges, after all.” She repeated her fathers’ words, wishing she believed them.
Her brother shook his head slowly from side to side. “I worry about the triton, Alara. Too many years of battles, too many injuries, old age. If the dragons did make a play for power, I don’t know if he’d be the right one to lead Murrough to victory.”
The princess chewed at the inside of her cheek. Unfortunately, Florian had a point.
Chapter 10