by Angie Fox
“The patrol should be back in five minutes or less,” he said, shrugging off the jacket completely.
Wait. “What are you doing here?” He should have been back at his own camp by now. He’d be missed. Discovered.
“You need a ride,” he said, matter-of-fact.
“Right.” Of course he’d stayed for me. It was Marc.
Yes, I was still mad at him, but the clenched fist inside me loosened. There was some justice in the world. One good man survived, when so often many did not.
His hands went to his waist, unhitching his belt. Firelight illuminated the curve of muscle at his hip.
Wait. I saw where this was going. A Jeep was bad enough, but if he thought I was going to ride over the Great Divide on dragonback…
He dropped his pants.
“Do you mind?” I asked, glancing behind us as he shucked his boots. Yes, I’d seen it all before, but not for the last decade. And besides, I was still angry with him. And I kind of hated him, and here he was stripping, and Harry Potter on a pogo stick, I’d forgotten how good his backside looked.
“No out-of-uniform jokes, okay?” he said, his voice betraying a smile.
Yeah, yeah. He could still get to me. I was glad one of us was amused.
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, soldier,” I said, trying to keep it light, trying not to stare—and failing miserably.
He was lithe, with the build of an athlete. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth as I stared at the dip of muscle just below his left hip. There he wore the mark of the silver dragons. It was circular, with the head of a dragon swallowing its tail. It was supposed to symbolize never-ending loyalty to the clan. I used to play with it while we lounged in bed on our days off.
“Keep an eye out,” he said, lowering his head to shift.
He was at his most vulnerable during the change. I scanned the area in front and behind us as he bent, the muscles in his back expanding, his bones re-forming. His neck grew long, and scales sprouted along his back. The air around him glittered as his hands and feet morphed into talons, and he grew to the size of a large horse. I’d seen it a hundred times, and I’d still never seen anything like it.
Spikes framed his long face, curving downward toward the hard white plates of his underbelly. Dorsal spines inched down his neck, as hard as his thick armored hide. He pawed at the ground with four-clawed talons. Legend said the claws symbolized earth, fire, air, and water. Marc was an elemental dragon of the air. Immense wings unfurled from his back.
Marc was a born dragon, silver and beautiful.
He crouched before me, rumbling low in his throat, and when he caught my eye, he blasted my leg with a shot of cold air.
“Cut it out,” I said, gathering up his clothes. Teasing would not make me relax. Escaping here in one piece would.
Maybe. At least it was a start.
His clothes smelled like him, spicy and warm. I cradled them under my arm. “This is insane,” I muttered, climbing onto his back.
I wound my fingers around a wide dorsal spike at the base of his neck. Its blunt tip curved upward like a saddle horn.
He snorted, his warm breath washing over my stiff fingers. For this one night, this one mission, we’d come together. So I braced myself as he shuddered and leapt off the helipad.
Chapter Six
We hung in midair for a split second before he dove low. My stomach jolted at the sudden drop. Show-off. It reminded me of the times I’d flown with him back home.
He had no fear, which was good, because I had plenty for both of us.
Back in the day, we’d take long hot baths after flying. Marc had never been a big tub guy until I showed him just how fun it could be if he had company.
I zapped the memory before I could dwell on it too much. I didn’t need to be thinking of Marc that way. He was my past. And he was on the other side. Permanently.
Tonight was just a fluke—a brief moment in time. We were together to investigate the circumstances behind Dr. Keller’s disappearance. Nothing more.
Knees tight against Marc’s flanks, I clutched the thick spike at the back of his neck with one hand. The other, I used to cradle his clothes to my chest. I should have stuffed them into the duffel bag strapped over my shoulder. I would have if I hadn’t been so distracted by him in the first place.
Wind tore through my ponytail as he skirted the rocky plain beyond the helipad. We flew so low that I could make out the shadows of rocks in the moonlight.
It wasn’t my worst night in Limbo.
I was just glad he’d waited for me. It was the least he could do, considering I still didn’t know how we were going to survive once we hit the Great Divide. Or how I was going to face a murdered soul without it trying to kill me, possess me, or worse.
I focused on the dark desert and the bright moon. Wind buffeted my legs as his body flexed under me, his wings beating in a comforting rhythm.
I’d forgotten just how tight and powerful he was. Many of the doctors I’d known had let their bodies go, even in medical school. Marc had been a swimmer and it showed.
He’d been my first love, ever since he was my head resident and sent one of the techs to the lab to get fallopian tubes. His joke had flopped when the tech started thinking about it halfway to the lab, but it didn’t matter. I’d fallen hard and fast.
I glanced behind us at the endless wasteland stretching out into the darkness.
I romanced him by having his least favorite orderly transport a body to the morgue, a body that then came blood-chillingly back to life and had the orderly screaming through the hospital and out into the parking lot. I’d never seen that woman move so fast in her life. Of course, there were no real zombies in New Orleans, none that I’d ever met, anyway.
Still, with the right makeup, I could be quite convincing.
Marc wised up and took me out for a round of oysters at Cooter Brown’s. I took him home to meet my family. I was never one to play games, and I knew I wanted to be with him. He’d wanted to be with me.
Until he’d been dropped straight into Limbo.
An unearthly screech echoed across the desert, and I felt Marc tense. I turned toward the sound and saw a pack of dark creatures barreling straight for us.
Marc growled, and I left my stomach somewhere on the ground as we rocketed straight up into the night. “Wait!” I felt like I was hanging in midair, my legs losing their grip on his back.
Sweet mother.
I grabbed him with both hands, clinging to the back of his neck. Hard curved spikes pressed against my chest as I willed myself to hold on. He wouldn’t drop me. I couldn’t fall.
We leveled off and spun straight for the pack of large flying things. They almost looked like giant vultures, slick and spindly in the moonlight.
Marc roared, icy air blasting out of his mouth, and I saw the creatures for what they were—flying imps.
I slammed my forehead into the cool scales of his neck. I didn’t even know imps could fly. We were heading straight for them. Marc tensed under me as screeches filled the air. Leathery wings beat at my back. I braced against the sharp clawing of talons, waiting for them to try to rip me off Marc’s back and make me fall.
But I only felt Marc’s strong body underneath me, his breath raw and ragged.
Gasping, I raised my head to see past Marc’s long curved neck. I saw empty sky and the full moon beyond.
“Where’d they go?” I whipped around to look over my shoulder.
The whole pack of them trailed us about fifty feet back. They flew close and disorganized, snapping at one another as their wings collided. But they didn’t attack. Not yet, at least.
Marc dove close to the ground again, keeping a firm driving pace. No question he knew they were right on our tail, but he didn’t charge them again. We kept flying, straight and low.
It seemed that speed was more important than victory over the wildlife of Limbo.
“Okay.” A shudder ran through me. If they could attack me
, if they could swoop in and snatch me, I had to think he’d take them down, or at least try. I wound my fingers more tightly around the blunt spike at the back of his neck. “We’ll get through this,” I told myself.
I almost believed it.
But here I was, whole and uninjured and, I realized with a start, gripping Marc with both hands. “Oh no.” I’d dropped his uniform somewhere over the desert.
I rolled my left shoulder and felt the pull of the strap and the weight of the duffel resting on my back. Marius’s gun lay heavy in my pocket. This was going to be fun to explain. I had my things. Marc was the only one who was going to have to walk around in the altogether.
Maybe I could lend him my Zephyrs jacket. He could wrap it around his waist à la Tarzan.
Heat blasted us from below. Squinting, I saw lava tracing across the desert floor like an insidious growth. It glowed orange hot against the blackness. My legs and feet warmed as if I were standing too close to a BBQ grill.
Keep that thought. BBQ grill. Not hot lava.
Energy crackled in the air. It weighed hard on my chest. With every breath, I could sense us drawing closer to the armies.
Sweat trickled down my back. It felt like the moment before a violent storm, when every living thing, on the most primitive level, knows to run, to hide, to seek shelter before the onslaught. Instead I held on with all my strength as we advanced.
With every beat of Marc’s wings, I could feel the energy thicken. It wound low in my belly and tingled along my spine. I felt rough, wild.
Flames from the soldiers’ camps burned hot on the horizon. The Great Divide stood dark and menacing between them, a no-man’s-land, crackling with power. It reached out to me like a living, breathing thing.
Marc beat his wings harder, raising us higher. Soon I saw why. Giant tubes scattered across the desert floor. They glowed red against the rivers of molten rock. With great, snuffling pops, they sent lava flying into the air like mini geysers.
I could feel the heat of each burst through my combat boots.
Merde. Was this what our evac people saw every day? No wonder they didn’t like to send mortal doctors too close to the front.
Dotted among the flaming geysers, large flat rocks reminded me of giant cave formations.
The energy was palpable now, a slow steady pounding that thundered through my veins and slid with an aching familiarity over my skin.
We’d lost the imps, which was as frightening as it was a relief. If minions of the devil didn’t want to be here, what business did we have?
Shoulders hunched, I hugged my knees and my thighs closer to Marc as he circled one of the flat rocks. I couldn’t believe he was actually getting closer to the ground and the geysers.
I felt the heat on my face, then a lurch as his talons hit the surface and we came to a shuddering stop.
“Here?” I asked.
He grunted, as if I were the crazy one.
“Okay, dragon boy. Don’t get huffy,” I said as steadily as I could. With a snort, I remembered how that used to drive him crazy back in New Orleans. He’d shift and then I’d start telling him how the Zephyrs were way better than the Saints (his favorite) or how I was going to paint his apartment pink (the most un-Marc-like color in existence).
It wasn’t like I was razzing him on purpose this time.
I pried my stiff fingers from their grip on Marc’s back and eased onto the ground, hoping my legs would hold me.
Landing hard, I let the weight of my duffel slide off my shoulder and down onto the ground. “Nice meet-up you’ve got going here”—a flat rock in the middle of nowhere. My skin flushed, my body trembling.
Get a grip.
I squinted as my eyes adjusted to the brightness of the lava bursts below us against the darkness of the night. I trusted Marc with everything I had. At the same time, I hoped he knew what he was doing.
At any rate, I gave him his privacy as he shifted behind me.
Hands unsteady, I rifled through my duffel. “Hey! Lookie here.” Part of Marc’s wardrobe had made it into my bag. I pulled out one very large, war-roughened combat boot.
Lovely.
I kept hold of the boot and drew my hair out of my eyes as I straightened.
The barrenness of this place was overwhelming. The heat of it wound through me. I stared out at the blistering wasteland, at the distant battle lines of two massive armies.
Trembling, I checked for any sign of the imps. The air burned to breathe.
“What are we doing here?” I winced. I felt like we’d been dropped into a churning firestorm.
“We can’t cross the Great Divide without burning up.” His voice resonated low in my stomach. “We can’t skirt it without getting shot down.”
“Well, then.” I flexed my free hand, refusing to look back at him. Marc was naked, I knew it. I didn’t need to be looking at that right now. My face heated even more. “What if we go really far out of our way?” Preferably now. We’d probably run into imps again, but… “We still have plenty of night.”
“Both sides have patrols and skirmishers,” he said, moving to stand next to me. “I don’t know how far out. They’ve also set up charges at the edges of their lines. If we don’t get arrested, we’ll be incinerated. The safest way is to go straight through the Old God Army lines.”
“Naturally.” That was about as suicidal as coming here with him in the first place.
“We’re meeting my contact here.” I glanced up at him to find him watching me. “So if you don’t mind, I’d like to get dressed.”
“About that…” I tried to think of a suave way to put it. “I dropped your uniform—” I winced, giving myself a mental shake “—except for this.” I handed him the boot.
The skin at his forehead crinkled. “Well, I suppose this is better than nothing.”
I didn’t see how.
“Step back,” he said, moving me aside as lava pooled near one of my feet.
“Holy—” I leapt straight at him, colliding with warm skin and muscle.
“This way.” He drew a hand around my waist as we both took several steps back. If I’d thought he looked good from a distance, it was nothing like up close. He was leaner than I remembered. Harder. I took in the sculpted planes of his chest, the pure natural strength of him.
I froze and he guided me back two more steps.
“Come on. We don’t want you to get incinerated because you had to see me naked.”
I flushed straight down to my toes. “I wasn’t—” Oh, what the heck. “I don’t know what got into me.”
“It’s this place,” he said, his voice deepening. “It magnifies whatever you’re feeling. With the armies, it’s usually battle rage. With us, it seems to be…”
Attraction. He didn’t have to say it.
I struggled to untangle myself from him. “I’m not starting this again,” I said quickly.
“I know,” he rushed, his voice raw. Suddenly impatient, he brushed past me, focusing on the lava finger. “I’m not a masochist. Why do you think I stayed away from you before?”
I’d assumed it was because he didn’t want me. Now?
I was almost glad for small homicidal lava creatures.
The line of magma seeped from the underside of the rock, straight for me. My duffel sat a few feet away, near the edge, untouched. Most of the rock remained clear, in fact. “What is it doing? Following us?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He slipped a hand inside his boot and pounded the hard sole onto the ground. “They like organic creatures.” The lava shrank back like a frightened animal. “These are treated,” he said, matter-of-fact, showing me the red underside of the boot.
“How does it not freak you out?” It wasn’t like the lava was fast, but it would have been on me before I realized it. And then what? How do you shake off molten rock?
“You don’t get lava fingers in your camp?” he asked, somewhat surprised. “We must be closer to the front.”
Another reason to
avoid MASH-19X.
My eyes darted over his body again. I couldn’t help it. He was sleek, gorgeous.
His chest shone with a thin sheen of sweat.
Get a grip. This was not a sexy place, and Marc was not even mine anymore. Besides, if I was going to have any sexy thoughts at all, they should be about Galen—whom I would never see again.
Merde.
“Tell me again why I agreed to do this,” I said, watching Marc flip the lava finger off the rock like a hairy spider.
“Because you always do the right thing.” He dropped the boot and closed the distance between us. The corner of his mouth tipped up as he drew me into his arms, “Even if you have second thoughts about it. Or third.”
“Or fourth.” It was too much. Being here. With him. I felt like we were on some demented outdoor camping trip, only we were on a life-and-death mission, and we couldn’t afford to get distracted.
I ran my hands along his shoulders, up his neck. “So this,” I said, to be clear, “this is just the Great Divide?”
“Definitely.” He brushed his lips over mine once, twice. “Maybe.”
“Don’t say maybe,” I ordered. If anything, I needed the excuse.
Then he really kissed me, and any second thoughts I had went flying out the window. It was so achingly familiar, like coming home.
He deepened the kiss. Or maybe that was me.
This was the man I’d fallen for all those years ago. He was straightforward and brave, vibrant and alive.
He drew back, his breath heavy and harsh against my cheek. “Sorry. I just had to…”
“I know.”
This wasn’t just the lava or the energy or the Great Divide. This was me and I knew it.
“Marc.” I pulled away from him. “You realize this is a bad idea.”
“Yeah,” he said, letting me go. He took a few steps toward the edge of the rock and thwacked a lava finger with his boot. “We gotta keep an eye on these buggers.”
“Not what I meant.”
I didn’t need to be getting involved with Marc. There was no future for us anymore.