Now, she reveled in the flavors of cheese, beef, crusty tortilla...and was that bite in the center a tomato like the one Fee had seen her father trade for once as a child? For a long moment, the fire mage basked in borrowed luxury and allowed herself to forget that she was on a mission to wipe the Aerie off the face of the earth. She forgot that her father was awaiting a tardy update. That the explosives around her waist could be remotely detonated if Malachi’s already tenuous patience ran all the way out.
Instead, she licked the last oily juices off four fingertips then inhaled a deep breath and pressed open the heavy door leading to Sunsphere’s penultimate level, another space where ordinary humans lived and worked. And this time, she was less shocked by the warm welcomes, by the lack of wariness that had been trained into Fee since birth. When offered yet another meal, she forced herself to sit back as she chewed, listening to a conversation that whirled around her head like a raging inferno of dancing flames and warm flickering laughter.
“...the crop this year will be good.”
“Do you think Lord Nicholas will trade for fabric again in the spring?”
“A shame about Lord Jasper.”
Then, an honorific that she’d heard many times that day already: “...Lord Dragon.”
Fee turned slightly in her seat so she could take in the face of this final speaker. The man was her father’s age and had a bit of the same look about him—tall and stern with features that spoke to power and ambition. But his words were soft and caring, nothing like Malachi’s biting tones.
“Has anyone been to the fifth floor to check on Lady Sarah?” the man who was and wasn’t like her father asked his companions. “I’m sure she took Jasper’s passing hard. And the Lord Dragon didn’t seem to be in any state to tend to his mother.”
His mother? If the moppet on the floor below had been a potential hostage after riding piggy-back on Lord Mason’s shoulders, how much more powerful would this Lady Sarah be at speeding along the culmination of Malachi’s plans?
Fee stopped ladling hot soup into her mouth and instead sat stock still, hoping no one would notice they were dropping state secrets around a stranger who very definitely didn’t have their best interests at heart. And as Fee listened, she quickly realized that everyone—dragons included—would cut off their own right legs if it meant protecting the elderly human from harm.
Which meant Sarah was the key to moving Fee and her explosives from Sunsphere to Aerie proper. There, she could create maximum mayhem while fulfilling her father’s desires all in one fell swoop.
Once again, the phone at her hip vibrated harshly and Fee bade quick farewells before her companions could notice the buzz. Back in the stairwell, the incoming message was even less heartening this time around. “Call me in fifteen minutes or I’ll detonate the explosives,” it read, Malachi’s annoyance at being ignored clear in both diction and tone.
Fee shivered. Remote detonation had always been their backup plan, of course. But the assumption was that Fee should do her level best to place the bomb and make her escape before Malachi pulled the trigger. That she’d have time to slip away through the stream of fleeing humans and dragons, would manage to evade hungry plants waiting at the base of each tower and return to her father’s enclave triumphant.
Of course, Fee had always understood that rosy scenario to be entirely fictional. But she needed to believe Malachi thought differently. It was just too painful to consider that her father might willingly send Fee to her death like a disposable tool to be used once then discarded.
So she hesitated, torn between the clear route toward her original goal and the confusing generosity that had been showered upon her shoulders by the Aerie’s inhabitants. “Wait,” she typed into the dratted cell phone at long last.
Then, swallowing down the final dregs of bitter kindness, she turned left at the base of the stairs and continued up.
Chapter 8
Fee knew from overheard conversations that the top floor of the Sunsphere was a hydroponics lab, the location where Lord Mason’s foster mother was most likely to be found. So she opened the door with teeth gritted...only to be brought up short as Sarah called out an unusual welcome.
“Never mind the smell.”
Fee squinted against the brilliant lights illuminating the space, then nearly retched as the aforementioned odor filled her nostrils. “What is that?”
“Bad batch of nutrients,” the older woman said, seeming no more concerned about Fee’s uninvited presence than the downstairs humans had been. “I’ve got a window open, so the stench should air out shortly.”
Sure enough, a gap in the glass wall let in breezes from a wintry day that glowered gray and overcast as the morning’s snow picked up its pace. Three fans encircled the aperture, their blades humming as they pushed foul-smelling air currents outside, and an occasional gust of wind swept inside to refill the emptying space.
Unconcerned by both cold and stink, Sarah hummed as she puttered only a few feet away. “You must be Fee,” the older woman said after a moment, glancing up at last from the seedlings she was tending.
Fee jolted, but whether at the woman’s omniscience or at the sight of so many living plants in one area she wasn’t sure. The former could be explained away easily enough—after all, as soon as she’d spun a fake history for one person, the tale had traveled faster than her feet could carry her down Sunsphere’s well-developed gossip network. By level four, everyone had been familiar with the tale she’d offered on the floor below.
So, yes, Fee’s name on Sarah’s lips made a strange sort of sense. But innocuous plants that didn’t bother rebelling against their human handlers? That extraordinary sighting was far less easy to swallow.
“Won’t they harm you?” Fee asked, stepping further into the room. Water gurgled as a pump drew liquid up from tanks to cascade over trays of root-covered rocks, but the plants above appeared dead. Not leafless, but motionless, as if they’d somehow been bludgeoned into submission or trained to leave nearby humans alone.
After twenty-four years spent hiding from grasping grapevines and hungry honeysuckle, Fee couldn’t begin to imagine how that end had been achieved. In fact, when a breeze from the fan sent one leaf questing toward her, she jumped backward to escape floral parry. To her surprise, the plant part merely subsided back into its former position, as inanimate as the snow that drifted down outside.
“These little guys?” Sarah asked mildly, running fingers over thin leaves as if she were petting a dog. “They’re not part of the Green. No earth, no Green.”
The explanation made logical sense, but Fee still held her breath as she waited for the plants’ reaction. At any moment, they’d latch onto the older woman’s hands, would bind her arms against her sides and reach up to her throat to strangle away all life-giving air.
But Fee was wrong and Sarah was right. The herbs merely swayed gently beneath the older woman’s touch before going entirely still. No earth, no Green.
Danger averted, Fee opened her mouth to ask why the Sunsphere was growing plants, never mind that these particular individuals were apparently harmless. But then she finally surveyed the lab with a more critical eye.
These weren’t mere plants; they were crops. Highly expensive and deeply coveted assets in this day and age when humans subsisted on the bare minimum nutrition carefully foraged out of an angry forest.
Lettuce Fee had eaten once before, and she’d tasted tomatoes in that precious taco on level three. If her childhood picture books were anything to go on, perhaps that yellow cylinder was a squash and the dangling pods were beans?
Despite her best intentions to remain focused on her objective, Fee found herself walking down the alley of wondrous edibles and soaking up the unusual colors and textures. At Sarah’s nod, she even reached out and trailed a tentative finger across one lustrous red fruit.
“That’s a strawberry,” the dragons’ foster mother said from just behind her left shoulder. Wow, the old woman could travel fast.
“You can taste it if you want to.”
“I shouldn’t.” Fee backed away from the plants, retreating toward the open window at the far end of the row. There had been far too much kindness during this particular morning already. Too many well-fed people with plump cheeks and wide-open smiles who greeted Fee as if she was a long-lost relative.
No, she wouldn’t eat the strawberry. Because Fee had a sinking suspicion that if she accepted Sarah’s offer and popped the seed-studded orb into her mouth, she might never fulfill the mission she’d been sent there to spearhead.
Speak of the devil. At her hip, the cell phone vibrated yet again, its buzz audible even over the roar of rotating fans. Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “Is that...?”
But before Fee could begin talking her way out of the mess Malachi had landed her in, an even greater danger appeared behind the older woman’s back. When Sarah had opened the window moments earlier, she must have assumed herself safe hundreds of feet above the ground on the uppermost level of the Sunsphere. Unfortunately, the Green was intensely attracted to the flow of electricity and was able to transcend its usual boundaries when the juice was worth the squeeze.
So while the primary gardener was otherwise occupied, a long tendril of kudzu had slipped up the side of the building and through the gap provided by one open window. It stalked its prey beneath laden benches, hiding from human eyes as stem extended relentlessly toward its goal.
Now the vine reached unerringly toward the woman in question, its tip coiled like a spring. The Green was inches away from Sarah’s unprotected neck, poised and ready to strike.
Chapter 9
Strangely, Mason grew warmer rather than colder as he left the well-heated lower levels of the Sunsphere behind. Meanwhile, the fire in his belly expanded further as he passed through room after room, listening to tales of his treasure’s passing.
Fee. Her name is Fee.
The woman he’d rescued from the forest was shy but charming, his people told him. Curious but humble. Her grace had captured the imagination of the young and brightened the smiles of the old.
For an instant, jealousy flared within Mason’s chest as he considered the fact that everyone had spoken with his treasure but him. Maybe it’s better this way, though. Savoring their first face-to-face encounter would only make that eventual introduction so much more profound.
Still, Mason was growing impatient by the time he traced Fee to the uppermost level of the Sunsphere, to Sarah’s usual domain. In case his mother was napping, he slipped through the door silently, turning his usual quiet walk into the silent pacing of a predator. Then flames flared upward in his chest as he took in a sight both expected and unexpected.
There was his mother’s familiar form, wide awake and smiling fondly. And, on the other side of the room, stood the exact same treasure Mason had worked so hard to track down.
“That’s a strawberry,” Sarah said, pointing toward one of the many hydroponic crops coating every surface of the circular space. “You can taste it if you want to.”
The memory of sweet and sour juices burst over Mason’s tongue and his mouth spread into a contented smile. His treasure was wide-eyed, obviously unfamiliar with the riches offered by Mason’s carefully managed domain. Unconsciously, he leaned forward, anticipating her rapture when she tasted each delicious fruit for the very first time.
But instead of accepting Sarah’s generous offer, the younger woman backed away and shook her head adamantly. Hmmm.... Her waking self was more prickly than Mason had expected, her shoulders tense and her steps jerky. Somehow, though, he found he preferred this reality over the imagined perfection of his sleeping beauty.
She was strong, poised, full of fire.
“I shouldn’t,” Fee said, turning away to face the open window.
The open window through which a long, slender plant currently twined. When no one was looking, the invader had curled along one wall before dropping down to hide beneath a table of cultivated crops. And now the earth’s malicious intellect infused the vine and prompted tendrils to strike at Sarah’s unprotected back.
Malicious greenery, here inside the Sunsphere.
Mason’s mind fogged with rage and the fire in his belly threatened to overwhelm him. The enemy had breached the walls of his home for the very first time...and the last. Through blood-tinted haze, he saw Sarah’s lips moving. Yet he couldn’t parse a single word as he lashed out, aiming for the grasping vine that threatened his foster mother’s precious life.
But something else got there first. Magenta light streaked past his peripheral vision. Flame burst into being. The vine turned black and shriveled emaciated to the floor.
Sarah was safe.
Turning, Mason took in Fee’s face as their eyes met at long last. Smoke drifted up from his treasure’s hands to loop around her pale features. Residual fire glinted from dilated pupils.
Fee wasn’t just metaphorically fiery. She was literally a fire mage.
Puzzle pieces rearranged in his memory as Mason finally allowed himself to understand the obvious. He’d picked out the flare of magical flames from a distance the night before, had flown to the spot to find this strangely soft-skinned slogger nestled amidst the ashes. The flames had parted to pass her by, their tribute to a powerful wizard who stroked their egos and fueled their burning.
Now, Mason was shamed by his own tunnel vision. Why should all mages be old, wizened grandfathers? Of course there were young, beautiful women among the enemy’s ranks as well.
Young, beautiful women like his treasure.
Fire raged beneath overheated skin as Mason’s legs carried him forward without conscious intent. “Why?” he demanded, forcing his voice to come out cold and hard. But unruly fingers mitigated his harshness, reaching out to brush a wisp of lustrous red hair out of his companion’s face. Remnants of fire-turned-static-electricity pressed tendrils against seeking fingers, twined hair around over-sensitized skin, clung on with all its might. Mason ached to respond in kind.
“I couldn’t let her die,” the fire mage breathed.
That hadn’t been what Mason was asking. Saving Sarah’s life was a no-brainer, the instinctive reaction of an honorable soul...
...And maybe that had answered his question after all. Fire crackled in a halo around Mason’s body and he took two long steps backwards to protect his treasure from further harm. But his overpowering energy only licked at the woman’s skin like a caress. No, a meager flame like this one wouldn’t burn through the shields of a fire mage.
Instead, his supposed enemy straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and glared into his eyes. “I know I shouldn’t be here. I failed. You’ve found me out. Now...are you going to kill me in front of your mother or what?”
Kill her? What Mason wanted to do was to accept the beckoning curve of those tantalizing lips and kiss this invader into submission. To drag her back down to the bottom floor of the Aerie and make love to her until she screamed with pleasure.
Instead, he compromised. Sliding back into the strange beauty’s personal space, he ran fingers up one bare arm, watching goosebumps trail erect beneath his touch. Pressing in a little closer, he hummed as blue draconic flames enveloped them both. Then he waited, hoped...and growled in pleasure as her fire leapt up to join his own.
Magenta and indigo, their flames danced together. Intertwined until there was only one rich, deep purple enfolding two people in its heated embrace. Then, when he could barely breathe from anticipation, Mason growled, “Tell me not to kiss you.”
He waited with tensed muscles for her to push him away. To lash out or flee, to act like the adversary she appeared to be.
Only she didn’t. Instead, Fee stood up on tiptoes, her breath kissing his mouth when she spoke. “But you don’t even know me.”
“But I like what I see,” he rebutted. And this time around, he didn’t wait before plundering the lush lips that beckoned his own.
Her mouth sizzled as it made contact, sucking away Mason’s breath and
leaving him gasping for air. Fire raged between them, scorching his skin and heating his formerly frigid body into an inferno.
Mason hadn’t realized how deeply he’d Faded until flames returned to their former levels in an instant. The agony was as painfully satisfying as changing shape and taking to the air after an enforced eternity on two legs. For the first time in weeks, he felt light, powerful, unbelievably alive.
Taking advantage of heightened senses, Mason deepened the kiss, parting his treasure’s lips and probing deeper inside. The mage tasted like blueberries and sugar. She felt both soft and hard at once beneath his questing fingers, and he pulled her in closer until she was leaning against his hungry body.
She fit like the key that unlocked his heart.
But Fee was absurdly covered with clothes, clothes, endless clothes. Fingers drifted south, hoping to uncover a patch of bare skin. Instead, Mason found himself fumbling at the lumpy sweater that hid what he suspected was a perfectly curved hip from his greedy embrace.
Aha. There. The knot wasn’t much, the faded gray obstacle falling to her feet as he pressed hungry belly against waiting skin...
...Only to find something entirely unexpected pressing back. Forgetting to be a gentleman, Mason sent hands darting beneath the hem of her shirt, searching for an explanation.
It wasn’t the explanation he’d hoped for. Hard lumps and thin wires. Cold plastic and slick tape.
Vaguely, the shifter noticed Sarah’s gasped complaint as he thrust his treasure’s shirt upward with abruptly chilling fingertips. But his foster mother needn’t have worried. Mason wasn’t planning to disrobe this beauty and make love to her there on the hydroponic lab’s tiled floor.
Instead, he was seeking the danger that his fingers had stumbled upon but that his brain refused to admit existed.
Only his brain was wrong and his fingers were right. There, strapped around the fire mage’s slender waist, lay enough firepower to eradicate the Sunsphere.
Shifter Origins (Series-Starter Shifter Variety Packs Book 1) Page 54